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MDC did implement mods and improvements about on a par with how GM dealt with the Chevy CITATION and Pontiac FIERO, slowly, grudgingly, and with lots of foot dragging and in a 'one band aid at a time' approach. Neither outfit made any big public announcements about how their particular vehicles were being corrected and changed and improved (do you remember the old but true joke about taking the Chevy CITATION out for a spin?). Airlines may have seen changes and improvements but even they did next to zero to let John B. Lunchbox who bought the tickets know that information and that things were getting better. In the end, both the cars and the airplane got incrementally better but no one outside of a small circle of insiders knew about it.
In the end the FIERO was a rip snorter cheap hot rod and the MD-11 got better, but by then the market had moved past them and no one cared or really missed them and could be why so many MD's are now box haulers and if you see a CITATION or FIERO on the street they are seen just slightly more often than VEGA wagons.
At the time of the MD-11 it hadn't yet dawned on lots of folks running MDC that the military side was starting to blow bubbles and sink and they couldn't use commercial as a tax write off any more, but had no improved advancing product to offer to customers, which is one huge reason why UAL passed on ordering 11's, they had enough DC-10's and were moving to the 777 along with most of the rest of the airlines, and everyone had all the DC-9 derivatives they could ever use.
I'm a pretty big supporter of MDC products but can also see that towards the end, the airplanes were a byproduct of those who built them, the average tin pounder on the floor was doing the best they could but the stupid decisions made in the Ivory Tower on Lakewood Blvd. negated 99% of the effort invested in trying to build something you could point to with pride and say 'I built that' insread of having people say 'you built THAT!?!' like MYTHBUSTERS proved yes, you can polish poop, but all you get is shiny poop.
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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-
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