Originally Posted by
Pineapple Guy
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.
I think the deal Mo'Ron made with Micky D's was, Buy one MD 11, get two Mad Dogs Free! Micky D's was looking for a US Launch customer, Swiss Air was already on, but nobody in the US wanted them. Mo'Ron stepped up...and AA followed, then sued MD when the fuel burn was wayyy more than they were led to believe.
I flew the beast out of ATL, from 1996-2000. It was good for doing Europe out of ATL, or Asia from the west coast, but not much else. Still, I only had to make one fuel stop going ATL-NRT, in ANC, in January, into a 150kt headwind all the way. But there were many, many flights where they had to block the back at only 220 pax, and fill it up with fuel (285,000 lbs max) and we had to wait to take off on 9L, because we needed the Downslope to make the AWABS work! We did have to declared min fuel one time into NRT when we should have made a fuel stop but our Dispatcher told us the winds would die off over Russia....not! We rolled in with 12,000lbs.,
One time we even got the stick shaker on the initial turn north, while bringing up the flaps, at 265 indicated (yes, we always had to ask departure control for 265, as that was clean speed). When we got to NRT we asked for a load audit. Turns out we were 10,000 over gross...
It was a fuel pig, no doubt. Sometimes we would fly all the way to ANC at about FL280, because it was too heavy to get any higher until you burned off a bunch of gas. I remember telling the guys back then, "As soon as the price of fuel goes up, they are going to have to get rid of these pigs!"
The only good thing about it was, Delta didn't have any spares, so if you were lucky, it broke, and you went home and got paid. BUT...if you were already in NRT when it broke, you got to spend an extra day there, for zero extra income.