McDonnell Douglas
McDonnell Douglas MD-11F
Your answers
From below
The view you'll actually get from high overhead.
Field marks
- Three engines — two underwing plus one buried in the tail fin — is unmistakable and shared with no other aircraft flying commercial freight today
- At a distance or head-on, the tail-mounted third engine can be hard to spot, and the size and wide body can momentarily suggest a 777-200 twin before the third engine or the lack of six wheels per main leg gives it away
- A center landing-gear leg (two wheels) sits on the belly centerline in addition to the two four-wheel main-leg clusters — a DC-10/MD-11 signature no twin- or four-engine widebody shares
- Upturned wingtip blades and a smaller tail than a DC-10 are the fastest way to tell an MD-11 apart from its DC-10 predecessor
Specs
- Length
- 61.62 m
- Wingspan
- 51.66 m
- Engines
- General Electric CF6-80C2D1F / Pratt & Whitney PW4460
- Typical seats
- Freighter only — no passenger seating
Size and shape, to scale
Photos can't hold a consistent scale from shot to shot — these silhouettes are all drawn at the same 10 px = 1 m scale, so the proportions here are trustworthy even though the photos above aren't.
Variant notes
- Only 53 MD-11Fs were built; today it flies exclusively as a freighter with FedEx, UPS, Western Global, and a shrinking handful of others as 777Fs replace it
- A stretched, wingtip-blade-equipped development of the DC-10 — same three-engine layout, smaller tail, glass cockpit, and a longer body
- FedEx and UPS both fly large CF6-engined fleets; the PW4460 option is comparatively rare
