Originally Posted by
sailingfun
The fuel stops were urban legend on the MD11. It never stopped for fuel going to Tokyo. The stops made were crew swaps in PDX when they did not have a bunked aircraft for the over 12 flights. It stopped perhaps half a dozen times during the LAX-Hong Kong operation however every time we stopped the Cathy 747 on the route stopped also.
Sailing, I agree that fuel stops were an extreme rarity. However, offloading passengers was not. I flew it for 5 years, and if you had any type of mechanical delay in the summer, such that you couldn't make the 1020am departure, and it started getting hotter, you were often times over weight.
I've also sat at the end of the runway waiting to burn down gas to be legal for takeoff because the outside air temperature went up 1 degree.
It's also the only airplane I was ever on that actually got a GPWS warning on T/O in Atlanta because the thing wouldn't climb.
It may have been cheaper than a 747, but we got what we paid for.