McDonnell Douglas MD-10
The DC-10 with a glass cockpit — two pilots instead of three · Launched 1996 · First flight 1999
The MD-10 is not a new-build aircraft but an upgrade of existing DC-10s. McDonnell Douglas launched it in September 1996, and Boeing carried it on after the 1997 merger; the first converted aircraft flew on 14 April 1999. The three-crew cockpit with its flight engineer station was replaced by an Advanced Common Flightdeck modelled on the MD-11, using the same Honeywell VIA liquid-crystal displays as the Boeing 717.
The point was crew economics: an MD-10 needs only two pilots and shares a common type rating with the MD-11, so FedEx Express — the driving customer, flying both types — could use one pilot pool for both trijets. FedEx converted former passenger -10s and -30s into MD-10-10F and MD-10-30F freighters.
FedEx retired the world's last MD-10-10F in June 2021 and flew its final MD-10 revenue flights at the end of 2022. A few MD-10-30s outlived FedEx service: Orbis International's Flying Eye Hospital, an aircraft donated by FedEx that began flying as an eye hospital in 2010, and a freighter with Bolivia's TAB.
