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Comment by SteveNuts | Hacker News Reader

Even if they end the grounding of the MD-11/DC-10 I'd be shocked if any airlines still using them will continue to use them.

Seems like the risk/reward just isn't really there for the few of them still in service, and if anything happened it would be a PR nightmare on top of a tragedy.

Definitely an end of an era!

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UPS and FedEx each have around 25 MD-11s, Western Global has 2 I think, the Orbis Flying Eye Hospital is an MD-10, some cargo airline in Botswana has one, and 10 Tanker has some DC-10 firefighting tankers.

That’s the entire worldwide fleet.

Given that the report only mentioned a single other seemingly related accident in 1979 I am not sure that objectively this is a reason to discontinue flying these planes. The fact that these planes have been in service since the early 70s is a testament to their safety and reliability in itself. Of course public perception, especially with the videos of huge fireballs from hitting one of the worst possible locations, might put enough pressure on airlines to retire the planes anyway.

I agree on the end of an era. Hearing something else besides just Airbus- or Boeing-something always gives me a bit of joy. Even though MDs and DCs are of course Boeings in a sense now as well.

One other accident that was similiar, but these planes have had a ton of crashes for other reason.

I managed to find some statistics on hull losses per million departures [1, p. 13]. Seems like indeed MD-11s have a highish rate of incidents by that metric compared to other types, even if they are not catastrophically less safe than other planes. That metric stacks the statistics a bit against cargo planes, which most (all?) MD-11s are now. These planes tend to fly longer haul instead of short hop, so you get more flight time/miles but less departures. There are also likely some other confounding factors like mostly night operations (visibility and crew fatigue) and the tendency to write off older planes instead of returning them to service after an incident. Plus these aircraft have been in operation long enough that improvements in procedures and training would impact them less than more modern types, as in they already had more accidents before these improvements.

[1] https://www.boeing.com/content/dam/boeing/boeingdotcom/compa...

The DC-10 had a number of other problems, but the MD-11 has always had a reputation of being an unforgiving aircraft especially when compared to the DC-10. It's less about training and more that the MD-11 was simply too many design compromises piled on to an old design.

The MD-11 had a pretty short service life as a passenger aircraft because it simply wasn't very fuel efficient compared to the competition, safety wasn't really the motivating factor. However fuel consumption was behind some of the poor design choices McDonnell/Boeing made. In broad strokes: McDonnell/Boeing shrunk the control surfaces to improve fuel consumption "necessitating" poorly designed software to mask the dodgy handling and higher landing speeds. This exacerbated a DC-10 design "quirk" where hard landings got out of hand very quickly and main landing gear failure would tend to flip the plane.

Yeah you can train around this but when something else goes tits up you've got a lot less leeway to actually recover safely.

I think that the Mad Dogs only exist as freighters (~or their derivative KC-10 tankers~-Edited to correct that they retired last year) these days. I think the last pax service for any of them was over a decade ago.

And air freight just gets a lot less public attention, I think they are going to keep flying them if they don't get grounded.

The airforce retired the KC-10 in 2021.

The KC-10 went out of service last year. None are operating.

Yeah, but DC-10 based tankers for wildfire fighting were still flying until the recent grounding: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DC-10_Air_Tanker

(Blancolirio points out that the DC-10 tanker is what they modernized to relatively recently -- before that they were flying even more dangerous WW2 airframes for firefighting.)

Damnit, I knew that! Just forgot it in the moment.

Most of the DC-10s in service in the US are used for fire fighting.

And with Omega Air, for contracted air refuelling

https://www.omegaairrefueling.com/

Yes, but there are many MD-11's still flying as freighters. There are four fire-fighting DC10's out of ~8 still flying, but there are 25 Mad Dogs (MD-11) at UPS, 38 with FedEx, and Western Global has 4, so there are plenty of MD-11F's around.

Here are 4 of them. All grounded now.

https://www.10tanker.com/gallery

Mad dogs are MD-80s.

There were only about 18 aircraft of all types still flying at the time and none are dedicated passenger aircraft. Indefinite grounding is the most sensible move.

Now, Boeing, et. al. are trying to evaluate the deficiencies in existing D checks and put together an inspection regime (i.e., NDT) that would proactively identify fatigue that would economically permit continued serviceable operation. If this feat turns out to be impossible for technical or cost reasons, then and only then will the grounding will become permanent.

Airlines haven't been using them, or at least not 1st world airlines. Just freight and wilderness fire fighters.

Most of them are used as cargo planes. Which have dramatically lower usage rates than passenger planes (and they are retired passenger planes)

Sucks for the pilots flying them for sure tho.

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