12/19/2023 0 Comments Largest passenger airplane![]() “The Communist Party could have well accused him of Ukrainian nationalism.” “This was a very bold step by Petr Balabuev, the An-225’s chief designer, who was Ukrainian,” says Sovenko. It had been named “Mriya,” meaning “dream”-not a Russian word but a Ukrainian one, a first for a Soviet aircraft. ![]() The An-225 was rolled out in Kyiv on November 30, 1988, to a crowd of thousands. Working off the An-124 platform didn’t mean that making the An-225 was easy, Sovenko adds, because the project still involved high technical risk and intensive engineering however, the main structural and technological problems-avionics, engines, power systems, and more-had already been solved during the design phase of the earlier aircraft. “All onboard systems and equipment, as well as the crew cabin, are almost completely borrowed from the An-124.” ![]() “Wings and engines are also the same, with just a new center section and one extra engine per wing, for a total of six,” says Andrii Sovenko, a former An-225 technical crew member and author of the book Wings Above the Planet: The History of Antonov Airlines. As a result, the An-225 was finished in just three and a half years. A lot was borrowed from the 124, including the fuselage, which was merely lengthened. Because Baikonur is some 1,500 miles away from Moscow, building an airplane was cheaper than building a new highway across difficult terrain.ĭesigning it fell to Ukraine’s fabled Antonov Design Bureau, which had already developed a massive cargo transporter, the An-124. The airplane is so large because it was meant to carry the Buran-the Soviet space shuttle-and its rocket components from their building site near Moscow to the launchpad at Baikonur Cosmodrome. As tall as a six-story building, the An-225 has a cargo hold that is longer-at 142 feet-than the distance of the Wright Flyer’s first flight. Its maximum takeoff weight of 640 metric tons is unparalleled. It’s the longest and heaviest airplane flying today, and its wingspan is surpassed by only one other aircraft (the twin-fuselage Stratolaunch, which has flown only once). Unable to maneuver on the tight taxiways at RAF Brize Norton in 2007, the An-225 made a loop after landing and headed toward the hangars on the runway. The An-225 has completed dozens of jobs like this one since starting its second life as a super-heavy cargo airlifter. But in the end, all 12 generators were delivered safe and sound. The Bolivian airport closed at night, forcing the crew to fly out at dawn so that the delicate unloading operations could be completed before sundown. The Chilean airport did not have a tow truck powerful enough to move the An-225, so Antonov had to fly in its own truck from Europe. “There was some engineering work to be done in order to make them a bit smaller.” Even so, they were too heavy for the cargo floor and required special damping panels. “The generators initially did not fit into the cargo bay of the aircraft,” says Beckfeld. The route was also unforgiving, through the Andes mountain range and across bridges, rivers, and different climatic areas.”Īirlifting the cargo wasn’t easy either. “The road distance was about 700 miles and would have required special transport equipment that is hard to find in the area. “We saved about three to four months using the An-225 compared to road shipping,” she says. Beckfeld, who works for German cargo specialist Hansa Meyer, had chartered the airplane on behalf of global powerhouse Siemens, which was building three power plants in the region. The flight was the first in a series of 12 consecutive round trips-an operational record for the An-225-to deliver a dozen 160-ton generators from Iquique, Chile, to Chimoré Airport in southern Bolivia. We took off from the desert in Chile and when the doors opened in Bolivia, we were in the middle of a jungle!” You can maybe feel it in your stomach, if it’s takeoff or landing. “What is interesting about flying on the An-225 is that there are no windows,” she says. It was a short hop, barely more than an hour, and yet the Atacama desert she departed from had been replaced by a tropical rainforest. When Monika Beckfeld stepped out of her first Antonov An-225 flight, she was astonished. ![]()
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