McDonnell Douglas MD-11

The MD-11 no longer carries passengers, so for travellers its safety record is now history. Up to 7 October 2026 it has seven fatal events in our data. Three were passenger flights and count against it, among them Swissair 111 in 1998. The other four were freighter crashes, the latest at Louisville in November 2025, which led the FAA to ground every MD-11 until it had been inspected.

What the MD-11 is and where it flies

The MD-11 is a stretched, updated DC-10: a widebody with three engines, one under each wing and one in the tail. It first flew in 1990, and McDonnell Douglas, later part of Boeing, built 200, including freighter and convertible versions. Unlike the DC-10, it has a glass cockpit for two pilots and no flight engineer. It also has a smaller tailplane, which saves fuel but gave it a reputation among pilots as a demanding aircraft to land.

KLM, Swissair, Finnair and Delta flew it with passengers, but it missed its range and fuel targets, and the 777 and A330 soon replaced it. KLM flew the last scheduled passenger MD-11 flights in 2014. About 50 were still flying before the November 2025 grounding, all freighters, mostly with FedEx and UPS. Our flight count covers only its roughly 2 million passenger flights, and we treat the type as retired.

Swissair 111 and the other counted accidents

• 6 April 1993, China Eastern: over the North Pacific, the slats deployed in cruise after the flap and slat handle was knocked out of position. The captain's recovery set off violent pitch oscillations. 2 of 255 people on board died, and many who were not strapped in were hurt.
• 2 September 1998, Swissair 111: about an hour out of New York for Geneva, the crew noticed smoke in the cockpit and diverted toward Halifax. A fire above the cockpit ceiling, most likely started by arcing wires and fed by flammable insulation, knocked out systems, and the jet dived into the sea off Peggy's Cove. All 229 died. Canada's investigators found that certification rules had allowed flammable insulation materials and required no fire detection in that area.
• 22 August 1999, China Airlines 642: landing at Hong Kong in a tropical storm, with a crosswind above the limit, the jet hit hard on its right gear, lost its right wing and rolled over in flames. 3 of 315 died.

The freighter crashes

Four MD-11F cargo crashes killed only crew members and are not counted, because our methodology measures passenger flights. On 23 March 2009, FedEx 80 bounced in gusty wind at Tokyo Narita after an unstable approach; at the third touchdown the left wing failed, and the jet rolled over and burned with both pilots. Korean Air 6316 crashed after leaving Shanghai in 1999 when the crew confused metres and feet, and an Avient freighter overran at Shanghai-Pudong in November 2009.

On 4 November 2025, as UPS 2976 rotated at Louisville, the left engine and its pylon tore off the wing and a fire broke out. The MD-11F climbed only about 30 feet and crashed into an industrial area, killing the 3 crew and 12 people on the ground. The NTSB's preliminary report found fatigue cracks in the pylon's rear mount. UPS grounded its fleet, and on 8 November the FAA issued an emergency directive barring MD-11s from flying until each aircraft had been inspected and repaired; on 14 November it extended the order to the DC-10. The accident closely resembles American 191, a DC-10 that lost an engine and pylon on take-off at Chicago in 1979. The investigation is still open.

How to tell if you are on one

You will only see one at a cargo terminal. Flight trackers show the ICAO code MD11. It looks like a DC-10 with a longer body and small winglets above and below each wingtip, and the third engine sits at the base of the fin.