The MD-11 is a three-engine wide-body jet airliner produced by McDonnell Douglas Corporation and derived from the DC-10. It can be regarded as an improved model of the DC-10. The MD-11 and DC-10 are similar in appearance, but the MD-11's fuselage and wingspan are designed to be longer, and wingtip sails are added to the tail ends of the wings to increase flight efficiency. The development of the MD-11 was due to the sharp decline in sales of the DC-10. With the original intention of reducing the operating costs of the DC-10, McDonnell Douglas used the original DC-10 production line to produce an improved new machine. Simply put, MD-11 is an enlarged version of DC-10. Not only the fuselage and wings are lengthened, but the passenger capacity is also increased by nearly 10%, and the endurance is also better. After the production plan of the MD-11 was exposed, it also attracted a lot of market attention. It successfully received nearly a hundred orders and successfully made its first flight on January 10, 1990. At the end of the same year, it was officially launched by Finnair on December 20. Commercial maiden voyage.
After the MD-11 was launched on the market, it did not fulfill its ambitions as expected, but its shortcomings were immediately apparent. Buyers found that the operating cost of MD-11 was not as ideal as McDonnell Douglas claimed, which severely damaged MD-11's market image. Although McDonnell Douglas promised to improve the deficiencies, amidst the market uproar, a large number of orders began to be lost. Among them, Singapore Airlines canceled 20 orders at once, which hit McDonnell Douglas hard, causing a funding gap for McDonnell Douglas. Finally, It was acquired by Boeing in 1997.
In fact, after the MD-11 came to the market, it was unable to achieve much advantages in performance compared with many twin-engine wide-body aircraft in the same period on the market. The high maintenance cost was a major disadvantage. In the late 1990s, it almost fell behind. To the point where no one cares about it. Many users regard MD-11 as a hot potato and are eager to get rid of it. Although the subsequent facelift of the MD-11F freighter was quite popular in the market, the MD-11 production line was closed in February 2001. A total of 200 MD-11s were produced. Most of the MD-11 passenger aircraft in service were converted into cargo aircraft. FedEx purchased many retired MD-11 passenger aircraft and converted them into cargo aircraft. This is the current MD-11 aircraft. 11 largest users in the worldChina Airlines has successively introduced the MD-11 for use on medium and long-haul routes. It was once the second-largest aircraft in the fleet after the Boeing 747-400 in terms of passenger capacity and endurance. As early as the late 1980s, the government introduced the MD-11 in order to balance the trade deficit with the United States. In September 1993, the first MD-11 passenger aircraft introduced by China Airlines arrived in Taiwan, but it was only a short-term lease in response to McDonnell Douglas' delivery delay. MD-11 served with China Airlines for nearly 10 years before being retired in 2002. A total of 5 MD-11 passenger aircraft have been used. It is particularly worth mentioning that the MD-11 has been in service with China Airlines for less than ten years and has had as many as three kinds of paints, namely the old and new paints of China Airlines and the Haidong Qing paint of Mandarin Airlines.