As I understand it the aircraft had been with the company a week and was the first MD11 they had operated. The pilots may have been experienced on type, but whose procedures were they using and indeed how current were they? Or to put it more directly how many MD11 sectors had the handling pilot flown in the last 90 days? Combine this with some dodgy loading or performance calculation and you get a possible scenario.

Condolences
 

I think its really sad that everyone jumps to conclusions about what did / didnt happen. What they should / shouldnt have done.
What they were / werent carrying.

Can we all just give a thought to the people at home whose loved ones arent going to be coming home - ever.

Maybe give a thought to what was maybe going through those pilots minds at that critical time.

Hopefully they didnt suffer and may they all RIP. Deepest sympathy to the families and loved ones, especially with Xmas coming up and if they were American, Thanksgiving.

I cannot begin to think what is was like for them and being in aviation myself .........

To many experts on here why not wait till the real experts decide what happened

Why indeed - no one has ever waited before - Are you suggesting something different because of known facts?

MD-11 incident/accident record.

Aviation safety network is your friend.

The Emery link above shows how the news reports get it wrong. They reported a load shift when the real cause of the accident, taking the lives of three good men, was an improperly installed elevator.

Freight crews will always fly aircraft that have seen their best days. It's incumbent on them to pay close attention to every detail affecting the condition of the aircraft. In days gone, or going, by, the FE was the key man. Now, in the case of the MD-11, the FO is the last piece of swiss cheese, doing the walk around, cargo inspection, and checking the logbook, paying particular attention to recent history.

We all rely on each other to do our jobs as pros. If one link breaks, we're all in danger.

Those guys in China may have been the best pilots out there. There is no qualitative difference between the captain flying for a scumbag operator and the (lucky) captain flying for a primo airline. This I know, having flown for both.

Amigo, all the incidents you cite involved LANDING mishaps. This tragic ZSPD incident, the one in question, was a takeoff problem; pure & simple. The MD-11 is an awesome, capable and worthy "piece of kit" with an honorable, enviable record. Your blaming the MD-11 for the mishaps you cite is like Rosie O'Donnell blaming the spoon for her obesity.

In capable, trained hands, the MD-11 is a jewel. Transparently, you've not flown one.

May God bless Pinedog, Saul & Shaun, comfort their families, and may He speed Bill to recovery.

You must be thinking of this Fine Air 101

Incorrectly reported at the time as a load shift, the NTSB determined that the load could not possibly have shifted since all pallet positions were occupied and there was nowhere for the load to shift to! As has already been said, pre Christmas flights ex PVG to Europe would almost certainly be full making this an unlikely scenario.

This is precisely why speculation at this stage after an accident can be detrimental to safety. Both the Fine Air and Emery accidents were speculated to have been load shifts but the causes turned out to be very different, elevator bell crank failure in the Emery case and incorrect loading (and therefore stabiliser setting) in the Fine air case.

Just ignore Stilton. He knows absolutely nothing about the MD-11. The FedEx NRT accident investigation conclusion hasn't been released yet (unless you have inside info) the LH hard landing in MEX is no argument, plenty of other types have suffered hard landings with structural damage and if you already know the cause of the PVG accident then please share it with us. I don't actually think you are from planet earth.:ugh::ugh::ugh:

The MD11 may or not be a fine aeroplane from the pilot's perspective. Fact is that it does have a much higher accident and incident rate than most other modern jets. Lies, damn lies, statistics etc....but putting it simply if the rate were applied to the jet I fly then around 120 pilots would have been killed and 60 aircraft completely destroyed in the last year alone. Another 60 aircraft would have been seriously damaged over the same time period. With a couple of exceptions most passenger airlines have withdrawn them from service. I think most people in possession of the facts would agree that there does seem to be something of a pattern.

As things stand now, Finnair is retiring the last MD-11 from service on Feb 1 next year. In other words, one less airline with passenger ops with it.

We've got 62.

And ~80 MD-10's.

They'll be around for a long time.

...and if you tried to load 737 with typical MD-11 load, you would break it on the apron. If you tried to fly 737 at typical MD-11 route, you would have the oportunity to test your deadstick skills. Are you really comparing like and like?

We don't blame 737 design for Silk Air, for Adam Air, for Helios, for Aeroflot Nord... Don't just look at the stats, check the accident reports, there are only five of them so far. Refreshing as it might be to see PPRUNers bash an aeroplane that is not FBW Airbus, it is wrong nevertheless.

So MD-11 doesn't like throwing yoke from 70 percent nose-up to 67 percent nose down in flare, she won't be happy with 1200 fpm touchdowns in crosswinds over limit, dives from 4500 are going to be detrimental to crews health in her and she has particular dislike for pilots that don't bother to identify correctly reading ASI. Other than that she is heavy, fast , sensitive and quite handful. But a) she is FAA certified b)there are about 180 of them still active and on any given day they will make at least thirty and maybe a hundred uneventful flights. So, yes, she can be flown safely.

The only scheduled passenger fleet left operating after this time will be the 10 at KLM. This for a mainstream type which went out of production only 9 years ago. Premature value writeoffs in the accounts of those airlines who chose it run into billions of dollars.

Nothing like this has happened in the industry before with large aircraft, even the 3-crew, 3-engine DC10/L1011 served a full lifetime of operation after the 2-crew 2-engine equivalent capacity types came along. This is why it is worth discussing. To draw a comparison, the last L1011 was built in 1983, and the manufacturer then left the civil market. But by 1992 the bulk of the fleet of 250 was still operating mainstream passenger services.

I'd like to know what the insurance rates are for a passenger MD11 compared to an equal age B777.

KLM had the intention of retiring the MD11 about 7 years ago. However they couldn't sell them to anyone for a reasonable price. As the leases of their 767's were expiring, they held on to the MD's and switched the 767's with new airbus A330's. The MD's are getting pretty old.

MD-11F
 

Huck, is FEDEX still looking for MD-11's to convert ? UPS?
Just curious, not passing judgement on the plane
Thanks
20driver

dont mention the L 1011 please! you know what might happen.......

I had a bit of difficulty following the logic of your post Clandestino then I looked at something you wrote in another thread about yourself:
'my stupefying ineptitude at critical reasoning'.
I think that sums up your last contribution pretty well. The size of the aircraft and its route structure is missing the point.

In the last eight months two MD11s have been written off and at least two seriously damaged. A total of 200 were built. Obviously there are less in service now counting the four previous write-offs and those being repaired or in storage. But keeping it simple 2/200 is one percent. There are around 6000 Boeing 737s. Yes they do crash, but apparently not at the same rate as MD11s. If we knew why there is such a difference, it might allow a few more colleagues to spend Xmas with their loved ones to use the emotive language of our cabin crew correspondent a few posts earlier.

Yes. We bought and converted two in 2009.

MD11's were taken out of pax service earlier than historical average because of the 777. It was launched 6 years later. It did a better, more efficient job with one less engine.

But the same heavy, "old-school" fuselage that made the pax version burn too much gas made the MD11 an awesome freighter. Just look at the BCF on the 777 - or the A330 freighter design changes. The MD11 was overbuilt. The 777/A330 were not.

Not aware of any pax B772s that have become BCFs [Boeing Converted Freighters] . . .yet.

The B772Fs seen in operation so far all appear to be pure factory freighters . . .without the window plugs and doors of would be converted pax airframes. :confused: