Regarding the DC-10 vs. L1011 competition.

I was talkning to a retired Delta pilot over the weekend and asked him what his favority plane was. He told me it was the L1011. He explained that the success of the DC-10 over the L1011 in sales was due to the fact that the L1011 is significantly heavier. Apparently, it uses a slightly thicker skin. He felt that the L1011 was a much better plane, that the Lockheed engineers had free reign to design the best plane possible. He believed that the L1011 could never have experienced some of the full system failures that caused early DC-10s to crash.

Regarding power ports on AA MD-11s. As of December there were only two MD-11s in AA's fleet without power ports. I was unlikely enough to fly one from DFW to FRA in F, meaning no DVD players and having to watch movies on the really really old built in video players with like a 3" screen. On the way back from FRA in C, the plane had powerports, but for some reason they still didn't have any DVD players (it took me four ifferent VCRs to find one that worked) and they didn't have the Bose headphones. I got the feeling that AA was pretty much neglecting service on the MD-11s.