Aviation Week has reported that a group of “renegade” Boeing Long Beach employees is trying to get the USAF interested in converting existing MD-11 airframes. They say it would give more capacity at less coat than 767s.
One problen is to bring all the 11s to a common standard…and the convertions itself won’t be cheap.
There is an off-the-shelf modification available, since the Dutch KDC-10s are simple modified DC-10s, and since the rebuilt was done by MDD under an FMS contract, there aren’t any development costs. The initial purchase of the DC-10s by the KLu initially compromised aircraft to identical standards, but one of the aircraft crashed (still with the Martinair charterliner) at Faro, so in the end the aircraft had to be brought up to a common standard.
Initially the program for the two KDC-10s was budgetted for US$ 89,5 million, including the purchase of the airframes, overhaul and modification to KDC-10. In the end this price couldn’t be met, and the total cost was US$ 96m (in 1994 dollars) for the two KDC-10s. Part of the cost overrun were the originally too optimistic calculations by MDD, while also the different standards of the two aircraft added to the price. To keep the cost overruns reasonable, the planned hose-and-drogue refuelling pods under the wings were cancelled, so the KDC-10s are boom-only tankers.
I think this is a very reasonable option (i’m not too up-to-date on civvie stuff, but i think there are plenty of MD-11s around, and they are still relatively new), and definately an affordable one. But somehow, Boeing’s order book suggests that the people in Seattle prefer selling new-built aircraft rather than updating something from the perfide MDD.
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