Sirs
I have flown the MD11 from 1994 to year 2000, and for two different airlines.
I’ll try to summarize my experience with her. Landing that beast is tricky from 50’ down.
At that point the autothrottle begins gradually to retard the engines to idle. This means that the flare, if for any reason the threshold speed was too low, had to be more carefully processed.
That’s the reason why someone developed the habit to disengage the autothrottle in a very short final and to manually retard the engines to idle when needed.
The second deception comes when the main wheels spin up. At that moment the spoiler panels on the wing upper surfaces come up producing an abrupt and strong pitch-up moment.
So: the pilot was exerting a pull force on the control column for the flare, and in a split second he has to revert the effort on the elevator, pushing it down, in order not to contact the tail on the runway.
Now imagine what happens if someone (PF or PNF/Cpt) pushes hard the column forward as usual, but either the aircraft is not yet on the ground (convinced that it is), or it bounced (and the feeling is that the mains are firmly on the ground).
The nose wheel collapses on the land and… We all know the remnant of the story, written so many time.
Those are my two cents.
And I long for someone to correct me.