Newsgroups: sci.aeronautics.airliners Path: news From: Robert Dorsett Subject: MD-11 (Re: hydraulic problems on DC-10) X-Submission-Date: Thu, 10 Dec 92 20:47:23 CST References: Message-ID: Approved: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM Reply-To: rdd@rascal.ics.utexas.edu Sender: kls@ohare.Chicago.COM X-Submission-Message-Id: Date: 10 Dec 92 20:58:52 PST In article pab@po.CWRU.Edu (Pete Babic) writes: >Does anyone know if the MD-11 has a proper locking mechanism for the slats? >I'm a layman when it comes to aircraft design, but the DC-10 really looks >like a substandard design that has killed a bunch of people due to cost >cutting short cuts. I had wondered about this, and researched it about a year ago. I wasn't able to find a clear-cut answer. Otherwise, my conclusion is that the MD-11 is a very marginal upgrade of the basic DC-10 design. The systems layout is almost identical; none of the major "complaint areas" have changed. There's a high degree of commonality between the DC-10 and MD-11, the "hydraulics plug" adopted after the SUX crash being a good example. The changes incorporate a 6-meter fuselage stretch, the winglets, composites in the tail, new engines, and a new cockpit. The latter appears to be the most radical change, but other than that, what characterizes the industry media is a lot of manufacturer "gee whiz" propaganda, long on "radical changes," but short on specifics. I recall an Av Leak article a couple of years ago, which suggested the full new type-certification wasn't necessary, but McDonnell-Douglas did it anyway, to try to exorcise itself from the political "ghosts" of the DC-10: a regulatory face-lift, if you will. Problem is, not much has changed. So: I see no objective reason to conclude the MD-11 is any "safer" than the DC-10, if one accepts the existence of the problems that characterized the DC-10's development. More detailed information would be welcome. I was really appalled by how little "hard" info was out there, and I spent quite a bit of time on it. Literally hundreds of articles on 767-X and 777 aerodynamic and systems development, dozens on Airbus, but only two or three "skimpy" treaments on the MD-11, the kind of things you'd find in "Aerospace America." Does MDC have some kind of anti-publishing policy or something? -- Robert Dorsett Internet: rdd@rascal.ics.utexas.edu UUCP: ...cs.utexas.edu!rascal.ics.utexas.edu!rdd