Gemini LTU MD-11 D-AERZ
I discovered to love the MD-11, passenger version, and i think it is a wonderful airplane, powerful and elegant in its "weird shape".
L-1011 and DC-10 were beautiful widebodies trijets, but the MD-11 is/was a real beast and watching at the dramatic 45° right turn for the short final at Kai Tak airport is a pleasure for the eyes. Too pity McDonnel Douglas developed the MD-11 too late, an iconic airplane failing because of the arrival of more powerful engines and the rising of widebodies twinjets.
Even in 1:400 scale there aren't so many MD-11, while in 1:500 StarJets produced some of the most beautiful masterpiece in both mould and liveries.
Now i am waiting for the Alitalia MD-11 by JCWings: don't know so much about the mould, knowing the producing time will be biblical, but knowing also that the Alitalia MD-11 was underestimated in both scales.
But McDonnell Douglas remains a visionary company, because in 1992 was trying to develop the MD-12, a double-deck giant very similar to what Airbus called A380 many years later. The MD-12 was thinked like a development of the B747-400 before and of the MD-11 (MD-XX) later, but there weren't interested operators (and money). Maybe an MD-12/MD380 flying around 1997 (ten years before the first A380 delivery to Singapore Airlines) would have had much more success of the A380.
Anyway, here we are: LTU MD-11, for years the workhorse of LTU long haul leisure routes.
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