Sticking my neck out as SLF . Experience of MD 11 limited to one LHR-RIO round trip on VARIG.
Read all these comments and on other threads with great interest and had a couple of questions
1 How did the MD 11 get approved by the FAA if as seems a common thread it can be a handful for?
Inexperienced pilots
Tricky weather –especially wind shear/shifts low down
Someone having an ‘off day’
I do not in the least want to impugn any ones professionalism because people do have below par days in every profession and job and indeed have great admiration for the airline pilot community doing a job that can be very very very different from almost all other professions when circumstances combine badly.
Isn’t a ‘fail safe ‘ approach something intrinsic in the design and acceptance process and approving an aircraft that apparently needs a seemingly higher level of skill/care/awareness than other comparable aircraft seems to be something of a risk when compared with all the other efforts made to make modern airliners the reliable safe machines they are.
However surely the Certifying authorities and indeed Chief pilots of companies that assessed/bought MD 11 had a duty to flag up the fact that the MD11 has some quirks that seem just not to be there on 747s 777s 330/340 series. Or was this a situation again where traditional pilot skills (and concerns) were just not given sufficient weight in a no doubt very commercially driven process.
Sorry to intrude on the debate just a view from ‘down the back’-where of course it is somewhat limited anyway
PB