That's when the A340 was introduced, in early 1990s. But both the A340 and the MD11 were rendered moot by the approval of big twins for overwater / ETOPs work. In fact B767s began to dominate the North Atlantic in the late 1980s, after the A340 design was locked but before deliveries began. And to top it all off the first-gen A340, the -200, was a fuel hog that didn't hit its performance spec (like the MD11), reducing interest even further.

The thing was a rocket though. I remember riding one of the first ones IAD-CDG in 1994, about a year after they came online, and we made it in under six hours.