Everyone is entitled to have his/her opinion about the MD11 and its good and bad sides. But for those who haven´t flown on the type, how can you compare its handling and characteristics with other aircrafts?
I´ve done a couple of thousand hours on it and I really loved flying this machine. We used to call "her" a "Diva". Why? Very simple. Treat her right and you´ll get the reward in form of a stable approach followed by a nice landing. But if, on short final, you let her go below approach speed or have a speed vector pointing way down when the auto throttle pulls the thrust back for the flare (of course you can override the retard) you might be running out of elevator force during the flare resulting most likely in a hard touch down.
But as long as you´re aware of this and remember basic flying it is not a difficult aircraft to fly.
Just my personal ´opinion´.
