The World's Largest Airplane Flies Again
The alert from FlightRadar24.com popped up on aviation enthusiasts'
smartphones early this morning: the Antonov AN-225 was finally on the move,
after 18 long months of inactivity.
Those who know the monster cargo airplane and eagerly track its
global delivery movements-myself included-long ago set up alerts with the
flight-tracking website for every time the big airplane takes off. However,
since it entered a major maintenance and upgrade program in October 2018, it's
been nothing but stony silence.
Until today. The six-engine, 290-foot wingspan, 600,000-pound cargo
craft-nicknamed Mriya, for "dream," and originally built in the late 1980s to
serve as a ferry aircraft for the Soviet Union's short-lived space shuttle
effort-lifted off from its home airport in Kiev, Ukraine for its first test
flight before returning to service, presumably within weeks.
The flight lasted two hours, with the aircraft completing two laps
above the Ukrainian countryside before returning to Antonov Aiport (GML). The
airstrip is owned by the company and serves as the primary R&D and flight
test center for its heavy-duty cargo aircraft.
The strategic lifter, registered UR-82060, has grown famous not just
for its outlandish dimensions-the aircraft is the heaviest in the world, and it
has the longest wingspan of any aircraft in operation-but also for lifting
incredible loads and delivering them long distances. The AN-225 holds multiple
world records, including the delivery of the single heaviest cargo item ever, a
generator weighing 417,000 pounds.
Its maximum cargo lifts have been up to 550,000 pounds-maximum
takeoff weight is 1.4 million pounds-and it can also handle unwieldy cargo, such
as long wind-turbine blades. Its services are routinely contracted by heavy
industry and governments, including the U.S. military, and enthusiasts routinely
show up at airports to watch it in action.
With its distinctive twin-tail assembly and slouching wings, each
loaded with six massive turbofan engines, the aircraft is a combination of
old-school design and modern innovations. It includes a fly-by-wire control
system and triple-redundant hydraulics, and its main landing gear has 32 wheels.
Its nose gear can lower to facilitate the loading of cargo through the nose.
(There's no rear cargo access, unlike most such aircraft.)
Mriya's pressurized cargo hold has a 46,000-cubic-foot capacity.
While Antonov hasn't disclosed yet what upgrades the aircraft received during
this maintenance break, it's known to have received improved avionics and at
least one new engine from supplier Ivchenko-Progress.
Tracking the aircraft is a perennial spectator sport, as Antonov
doesn't publish its schedule. But it routinely shows up in far-flung places like
West Africa, remote corners of South America, or the Australian Outback-in
addition to more familiar destinations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. It
has come to the U.S. on occasion, as well.
The AN-225's smaller sibling, the AN-124 Ruslan, is a much more
common sight, and equally impressive in its own right. There's also a second
AN-225 that has been sitting in a state of only partial completion for decades.
In 2016, Antonov initiated efforts to complete it, but there have been few
updates since then.
During a period when aviation enthusiasts are enduring a pretty grim
reality along with everyone else, seeing the AN-225 return to the skies
generated a little ray of light this morning. But it's a bittersweet prospect:
With the world sinking into an unknown new state that could demand the shipment
of huge volumes of emergency supplies, Mriya, which is routinely enlisted during
natural disasters, will undoubtedly see lots of action in the coming months-and
enthusiasts will have yet another reason to appreciate the big bird.
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