zlacker

They surely can and this has been done. On one the flights that I took with Turkish Airlines they had a few video streams from different sides of the airplane. One was from the top of the tail and you could see the entire plane.

Now... not sure how much that is helpful in this kind of emergency, they really didn't have time to do much.

>>zuppy+(OP)
I'm not sure they usually have the views on screen in the cockpit in flight, even if available (and an old MD-11 freighter won't have the cameras in the first place). The picture of an A380 cockpit (on the ground) on Wikipedia does show the tail view on a screen, but its on the screen normally used for main instruments. With an A380 that had an uncontained engine failure causing various bits of havok (Qantas 32?) IIRC the passengers could see a fuel leak on the in flight entertainment screens, but they had to tell the crew as AFAIK they didn't have access to the view in the cockpit in flight.