The impressive video in this post was taken after a six-and-a-half-hour drive to Preswick airport in Scotland to capture the Antonov An-225.
Filmed by our friend Dafydd Phillips on Aug. 4, 2020, the impressive video in this post was taken after a six-and-a-half-hour drive to Preswick airport in Scotland to capture the Antonov An-225. The world’s biggest plane and the only one in existence, it was fuel-stopping from Bangor, Maine, USA before flying on to Chateauroux in France.
Some basic stats are featured in the clip.
The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-225 Мрія, lit. ‘dream’ or ‘inspiration’; NATO reporting name: Cossack) is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft that was designed by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Ukrainian SSR within the Soviet Union during the 1980s. It is powered by six turbofan engines and is the heaviest aircraft ever built. It also has the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service. The single example built has the Ukrainian civil registration UR-82060. A second airframe with a slightly different configuration was partially built. Its construction was halted in 1994 because of a lack of funding and interest, but revived briefly in 2009, bringing it to 60–70% completion. On Aug. 30, 2016, Antonov agreed to complete the second airframe for the Airspace Industry Corporation of China (not to be confused with the Aviation Industry Corporation of China) as a prelude to commencing series production.
The Antonov An-225 was an enlargement of the successful Antonov An-124 that was initially developed for transporting the Buran spaceplane. The only An-225 airplane was completed in 1988. After successfully fulfilling its Soviet military missions, it was mothballed for eight years. It was then refurbished and re-introduced and is in commercial operation with Antonov Airlines carrying oversized payloads. The airlifter holds the absolute world record for an airlifted single-item payload of 189,980 kilograms (418,830 pounds), and an airlifted total payload of 253,820 kg (559,580 lb). It has also transported a payload of 247,000 kg (545,000 lb) on a commercial flight.
The largest aircraft routinely operated by the U.S. military is the C-5 Galaxy which is smaller than the An-225 and slightly smaller than the An- 124.
Photo by Dafydd Phillips