Comment by skim_milk
13 hours ago
The last MD-11 crash with deaths was in 2009 and the last DC-10 kerfuffle was when their unapproved replacement parts fell on the runway and killed the Concorde. I wonder if flight 232 gave them a bad name - everybody seems to know that accident. Looks like have a good record otherwise.
The DC-10 had some significant design flaws at the start.
e.g. https://mondortiz.com/the-problematic-cargo-door-of-the-doug...
The DC-10 was a rushed programme to avoid Douglas being frozen out of the 1970s widebody market by Lockheed and Boeing.
Similarly, the MD-11 was a cost-restricted update of the airframe to avoid McD being frozen out of the 1990s widebody market by Airbus and Boeing.
McD management wouldn't fund the more ambitious four-engined MD-12, so the trijet's fuselage was stretched and aerodynamic tweaks applied.
The MD-11 never met its performance targets and heralded the end of the Douglas commercial line. It was fairly quickly relegated from pax to cargo service where it has a good payload but little else to commend it.