I have stayed out of this so far for I do not have a dog in the fight.
However, some of you are dragging up DC-10 happenings which are completely irrelevant to this thread, which I CAN comment upon.
One of my good friends (PL) overran the runway on landing at KBOS in DC-10-30 N113WA on 23 Jan 1982. The cockpit ended up in shallow water but all of the occupants got off with little or no injuries.
My friend was completely exonerated at the subsequent board of inquiry. The braking action on the runway in question was actually 'nil' but no mention of this was ever passed to the crew by ATC or was even mentioned on the ATIS.
What on earth does this have to do with a heavy landing by a LH MD-11 in Saudi Arabia?
Let us fast-forward to February 1984. I was landing at JFK (in a DC-10). It was a foul day with bad weather, lots of turbulence and lots of precipitation. Everyone had been holding for around 40 minutes in pretty miserable conditions.
I landed on a very wet runway 04R. Because of the conditions, I used 50 flap (normally 35 flap) and cancelled auto pilot and auto-throttle (which tended to prolong the flare). I touched down on the numbers at the correct speed and made a normal landing.
The next aircraft to land was an SAS DC-10 (who had been 1,000 feet above us in the hold). Despite the conditions, they elected to make a 35 flap landing with the auto throttles engaged and didn't touch down until halfway down the runway (this I got from our FAA inspector) and they ended up with the cockpit in Jamaica Bay. (The aircraft was bought and rebuilt by FedEx).
What on earth does this have to do with a heavy landing by LH MD-11 in Saudi Arabia?
Absolutely nothing.
So why on earth do you experts keep spouting stuff that is completely irrelevant to the discussion and about which you know less than nothing?