The Swissair aircraft which crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia was an MD-11, built by McDonnell Douglas Corporation seven years ago. The MD-11 had enjoyed a good safety record until now, though it was already becoming obsolete.
McDonnell Douglas Corp., taken over by Boeing late last year, first unveiled its MD-11, the successor to the DC-10, in 1986.
The MD-11 is a three-engine, wide-body jet that seats 298 passengers, according to Jane's All the World's Aircraft. It is powered by engines produced by Pratt & Whitney, according to Jane's.
"It's a very well-thought-of aircraft," Mr Kieran Daly of London's Air Transport Intelligence told CNN. "Both the aircraft and the airline have a very good safety record in the industry," he said.
He said Swissair had recently taken steps to sell the MD-11s in its fleet, even though they were quite young, a testament to the airline's conscientious approach to maintaining its fleet in the best possible shape.
National Transportation Safety Board records show that since this model was first put into service in 1990 there were 15 incidents in which the tails of MD-11s struck the ground upon landing, damaging the exterior of the aircraft.
Before Wednesday's Swissair crash, the most serious accident involving an MD-11 occurred in 1997 when a Federal Express cargo MD-11 crashed into the runway and was destroyed by fire at Newark International Airport.
The same aircraft destroyed at Newark had been seriously damaged when it descended too quickly and its tail struck the runway during a hard landing in Anchorage, Alaska, in 1994. The tail strikes prompted the NTSB to issue recommendations in 1992 on how to avoid the problem.
Two of its recommendations were accepted by the US Federal Aviation Administration, but two others were rejected, including one that would have required the aircraft's manufacturer to install an indicator that would alert MD11 crews when the aircraft's tail struck the ground.
Neither McDonnell Douglas nor its parent company, Boeing, had any immediate comment on Wednesday's crash.
The MD-11 has a maximum range of 8,055 miles (13,000 km). It is used by many commercial airlines, including American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, KLM and Japan Air Lines, as well as the cargo carrier Federal Express.
When Swissair bought the MD11 version, it said the aircraft would save more than 30 per cent on tonne-per-kilometre fuel consumption.