Civil

‘He was flabbergasted. All four flight attendants pampered him and told me his name was Lloyd, so I patterned all my PAs to him,’ Boeing 727 flight engineer and airline pilot.

‘I was the flight engineer on a 727 in the first few months with my airline,’ Tim Hibbetts, Boeing 727 flight engineer and airline pilot, recalls on Quora.

‘Our reserve crew had been called up to go and pick up some passengers that had been stranded by a malfunctioning L-1011. We would rush down empty and pick them up, taking half of them to New York, their final destination. As we were ready to close the door, a passenger practically skidded aboard, having run down the jetway. Out of breath, he wheezed, “Almost didn’t make it!”

‘He looked around, saw an otherwise empty airplane, and remarked that we must not have started boarding yet. The flight attendants assured him we had and were closing the door. He peered around with narrowed eyes, perhaps looking for Allen Funt [Allen Funt was an American television producer, director, writer, and television personality best known as the creator and host of Candid Camera from the 1940s to 1980s] and his camera crew. They assured him it was time to go, so he started to move back to his seat somewhere in the middle of the aircraft. The flight attendants stopped him, motioning to a business-class seat, “Please, sir.”

‘He was flabbergasted. All four flight attendants pampered him and told me his name was Lloyd, so I patterned all my PAs to him. As we descended into the airport, I modified my approach announcement, “…we’ve certainly enjoyed having you aboard, Lloyd, and if you can find a few friends, we’d love to fly all of you sometime soon.”’

Hibbetts concludes;

‘He was as delighted as you could imagine.’

Photo by U.S. Air Force

Due to the American noise regulations, Braniff Airways Concorde supersonic airliners were limited to Mach 0.95 yet they flew at slightly above Mach 1.

The Aérospatiale/British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) Concorde was a British-French supersonic passenger jet airliner. It had a maximum speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude, over twice the speed of sound), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. The aircraft entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years.

The Concorde, which was jointly developed and manufactured by Aérospatiale and the BAC under an Anglo-French treaty, was built in twenty samples including six prototypes and development aircraft.

Air France (AF) and British Airways (BA) were the only airlines to purchase and fly the Concorde although also Singapore Airlines and Braniff Airways operated the airliner.

On Jan. 12, 1979, as part of its ambitious expansion program, Braniff introduced a service between Texas, Washington D.C., and Europe on interchange flights with British Airways and Air France. Flights between Dallas and Washington’s Dulles airport were operated by Braniff cockpit and cabin crews from which British or French crews would take over for the remaining segment. Due to the American noise regulations, Concorde was limited to Mach 0.95 yet flew at slightly above Mach 1.

According to ConcordeSST.com, Concorde was never painted in a Braniff livery, although there were several artist impressions (like those featured in this post) of what one would look like, if the service had continued it would have been more than likely that one side of the aircraft would have been given a Braniff livery, in a similar fashion to what happened for the Singapore Airlines services.

The only change was in the registrations and ownership of the aircraft. When in the US the “G” or “F” was covered up with white tape when the aircraft was sold to Braniff, so a Concorde registered as G-N81AC would become N81AC when flown in the US. Because the FAA would not allow the non-US aircraft a US certificate of airworthiness, the aircraft ownership was transferred to Braniff Airways for the Washington-Dallas segment of the route. As well as changing flight crews the US-approved documentation and procedures had to be present on the flight deck, with the UK/French documentation being stored in the forward toilet!

British Airways, at the behest of their insurers, were forced to fly a captain and flight engineer as cockpit observers for US segments as in reality, the aircraft were still BA-owned for insurance purposes. One interesting part of this was that the US pilots were allowed to fly Concorde up to 60, but British pilots were forced to retire at 55, so occasionally a US pilot would fly the aircraft, but if he was in the UK this would not have been allowed.

14 Braniff pilots (3 captains, 5 First officers, 4 flight engineers, a check pilot, and a check engineer) were trained in both France and the UK to operate Concorde, not just at the subsonic speeds that their services would operate at but also up to its Mach 2 cruising speed.

On the first day of services, two Concordes (Air France, F-BTSD, and British Airways, G-BOAE) flew in from the east and lined up to land on parallel runways at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW). The simultaneous touchdown marked the beginning of regularly scheduled supersonic service between DFW and Europe by Braniff in cooperation with Air France and British Airways. The new interchange was the first of its kind involving a United States carrier and foreign airlines.

Braniff terminated Concorde services at the end of May 1980 due to the high cost of operating the service with load factors at only 20%, coupled with Braniff’s general financial woes at the time.

Travelers were still flying in great numbers on traditional, slower, aircraft on the same route for the same 1st class prices to fly on Concorde. Concorde just never caught on.

Photo by ConcordeSST.com

A pilot is usually fired either before or after a flight, even if there is a third pilot on board (for rest breaks) to fill the seat.

‘A pilot is usually fired either before or after a flight, even if there is a third pilot on board (for rest breaks) to fill the seat,’ Corey Hawke, L-1011 TriStar pilot says on Quora.

‘Anyway, I was on a red-eye [In commercial aviation, a red-eye flight is a flight scheduled to depart at night and arrive the next morning. The term “red-eye” derives from the symptom of having red eyes, which can be caused by fatigue.] From Ankara to NYC via Athens. The flight was run by a small company that only ran two Lockheed L-1011 TriStars back and forth on the same run between Athens and NYC.

‘On the way over the plane had been slam packed and was literally half full of young students screaming and yelling. It was like Animal House only in the air and with no Belushi. To this day it still ranks as one of the most miserable airline flights I have ever been on… I felt sorry for the clean-up crew.’

Corey continues;

‘On the way back to the States a few months later, half the aircraft was empty. I thought I had lucked out. I abandoned my window seat shortly after takeoff (a rare event) and moved to the center where I put up all the armrests on an empty row and slept in near bed-like comfort across the lot of them. Steerage bliss!

‘About 6 hours into the flight, the captain got on the box and announced to all of the passengers that the parent company of the charter company had declared bankruptcy (In this case it was apparently not just a financial bankruptcy or the pilots would not have decided if we would continue to NYC or fly back to Athens. The “airline” literally was just two aircraft). There was a long pause while we all collectively thought, “Oh chit!” The captain got back on the box a minute or two later and stated that since we were just barely more than halfway to NY, we would not be heading back to Athens and that the flight would continue to NYC.

‘The passengers all collectively clapped at the news. Understandably, the service from the crew for the remainder of the flight was mediocre. But the flight attendants were handing out free booze (and I presume to consume some as well).’

Corey concludes;

‘So, in this case, the aircraft’s entire crew was fired with no notice in the middle of a transatlantic flight…’

Photo by NASA/Tony Landis

British Airways Boeing 747 flight BA 009, flown by Captain Eric Moody, lost thrust from all four engines at 37,000ft.

In the past 40 years, several jet-powered commercial airplanes have encountered clouds of volcanic ash and suffered damage as a result.

In 1982, when Mount Galunggung volcano, Indonesia, erupted, several Boeing 747s encountered ash from this eruption.

The events around one British Airways Boeing 747 flight BA 009 reveal the potential dangers of this sort of dust.

The airliner, flown by Captain Eric Moody, lost thrust from all four engines at 37,000ft.

Moody hadn’t a clue why.

It wasn’t until later, when he, his crew, and the 247 passengers on board the flight, were safely back on the ground, that Moody discovered the cause of the narrowly averted catastrophe – volcanic ash.

According to BBC, on the evening of Jun. 24, 1982, when flight BA 009 took off from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, there had been no hint of trouble: in fact, the weather forecast for the five-hour journey to Perth, Australia, was good and the crew was anticipating an uneventful flight.

As the Boeing 747 headed past Java over the south-eastern Indian Ocean at its cruising height, the first sign of trouble came.

After he left the cockpit for a stroll, Capt Moody was summoned back to the flight deck. He noticed puffs of “smoke” billowing from the vents on the floor and detected an acrid smell as he climbed the stairs of the Jumbo.

A St Elmo’s fire – a discharge of static electricity – on the windscreen was the first thing he saw when he opened the door of the cockpit.

But that alone wasn’t enough to cause alarm, Capt Moody said to BBC.

“That’s not unusual in the high wispy cloud. But it developed into something more than we’d ever seen before.”

The crew noticed the front of the engines were glowing as if lit inside when they looked out the side windows of the cockpit.

The impact the dust was having on the aircraft itself was detailed by then Capt Moody’s flight engineer.

“Engine failure number four… engine failure number two,” he said.

“Three’s gone… They’ve all gone.”

The Boeing 747 powered by four Rolls Royce engines had become a glider.

Needing time to calmly consider his options, Capt Moody used autopilot to put the plane into a gentle descent and instructed his first officer to issue a mayday call.

Many passengers were largely unaware that anything was wrong while the crew on the flight deck were frantically trying to figure out the cause of this freak failure.

However, the news had to be announced when the passenger oxygen masks dropped as the plane steepened its descent.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are all doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.”

The engines were brought back to life after a quarter of an hour without any power. Ash had clogged the engines, which only restarted when enough of the molten ash solidified and broke off.

Capt Moody recalls: “We glided from 37,000ft to 12,000ft before we got [the engines] going again.”

The plane headed back to Jakarta where it landed safely, though even then one of the engines had failed again.

It took two days for the investigators to confirm that volcanic ash had been responsible for the near disaster. The plane had flown into a cloud of dust spewed out by an eruption of Mount Galunggung, 110 miles southeast of Jakarta.

A close examination of the plane revealed the damage a plume of these tiny particles could do to an engine – the tips of the turbine blades had been ground away. The findings were eventually incorporated into a report on the dangers of volcanic ash to aircraft.

Photo by Richard Silagi via Wikipedia and British Airways

‘It’s a very different aircraft from the jets I flew, and despite being much lower performance, the Cessna 172 is perfectly capable of killing you when it impacts the ground,’ David Tussey, former US Navy A-7 Corsair II pilot.

The Cessna 172 is an all-metal, four-seat, high-wing, single-engine airplane equipped with tricycle landing gear, having a steerable nose wheel and two main wheels.

According to AOPA.org, pilots dubbed the Cessna 172 with colorful names like “Chicken Hawk,” or “Fryhawk” for those in warmer climates.

Despite the name-calling and sometimes love-hate relationship with the 172, pilots and owners always regale the 172 for its remarkably unremarkable traits. It’s not fast, but at least it’s simple and doesn’t burn a lot of fuel. It’s not sexy, but it’s utilitarian, it’s easy to fly, and it makes a great airplane for getting into and out of short, rough fields. It’s very inexpensive to operate and that, combined with its legendary dispatch reliability, makes it the trainer of choice at many flight schools.

Given its simplicity, can a fighter pilot fly a Cessna 172 without training?

‘After two tours in the Navy flying both F-4 and F-14s among other aircraft, and over 3,000 flight hours with an ATP, I decided one day to get checked out in a Cessna 172 which I had never flown,’ former US Navy fighter pilot John Chesire says on Quora.

‘It was totally foreign to me. However, after turns, stalls, and touch and goes, my instructor said he would “sign me off” but that I really “needed a lot more practice and training.”

‘I could not have agreed more! I was way out of my element. That was the first and last time I ever tried learning how to fly a 172.’

Chesire concludes;

‘TL;DR – So yes, I could fly it without any training, but not very well and not near to standards I was accustomed to.’

David Tussey, former US Navy A-7 Corsair II pilot, recalls on Quora;

‘Possibly, but it would be extremely dangerous and very poor judgment.

‘Military pilots know that the key to safe flying is proficiency, knowledge of your aircraft’s systems, and training…lots of training, lots of practice.

‘I have ~4000 hrs, all jet, but I would not step inside a Cessna 172 without a training curriculum and an instructor pilot to teach me how to fly that airplane. It’s a very different aircraft from the jets I flew, and despite being much lower performance, the 172 is perfectly capable of killing you when it impacts the ground.’

William Vaughn, Cessna 172 instructor, explains on Quora;

‘Well, as an instructor pilot at Boeing Field in Seattle, I was scheduled with a “student “who was due for a two-year biennial flight review in a Cessna 172. Some student. He was an USAF Captain who flew F-16s in Asia but had been grounded for a few years (sort of) “flying” Predator drones in Afghanistan. Though he should have been a bit rusty, not this dude. Since the slowest airplane he’d ever actually flown was the supersonic T-38 Talon, he tended at first to roar down short final approach flying at the T-38’s 170 knots approach speed. (Note: The Cessna redline never exceeds the airspeed is 158 knots and normal approach airspeed with full flaps is ~75–85 knots.) So, the answer is yes, some initial or recurrent training is prudent.’

Photo credit: U.S. Air Force and Civil Aviation Patrol

The time-lapse video in this post features the manufacturing of the X-59 QueSST and includes the merger of its main sections – the wing, tail assembly, and fuselage or forward section.

The time-lapse video in this post features the manufacturing of the X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology, or QueSST, aircraft from May 2019 to June 2021 and includes the merger of its main sections – the wing, tail assembly, and fuselage or forward section.

Construction of the X-59, under a $247.5 million cost-plus-incentive-fee contract, is underway at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company’s Skunk Works factory in Palmdale, California.

The first flight of the X-59 QueSST is planned for 2022.

In partnership with NASA, the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works team is solving one of the most persistent challenges of supersonic flight – the sonic boom.

The X-59 is designed to reduce the loud sonic boom, heard on the ground when an aircraft flies at supersonic speeds, to a quiet thump – a technology that will be demonstrated when the X-plane flies over communities starting in 2024.

The X-59 QueSST will be used to collect community response data on the acceptability of a quiet sonic boom generated by the unique design of the aircraft. The data will help NASA provide regulators with the information needed to establish an acceptable commercial supersonic noise standard to lift the ban on commercial supersonic travel over land.

This breakthrough would open the door to an entirely new global market for aircraft manufacturers, enabling passengers to travel anywhere in the world in half the time it takes today.

Bigger and more powerful than the Concorde, under the surface the Tu-144 lacked the advanced internals, engine and braking technology of the Anglo-French supersonic airliner.

In the heat of the Cold War, the militaries of both camps were competing not only in the space race. The civil aviation companies in turn raced supersonic flight.

Conceived by the Tupolev Design Bureau in the 60s in the Soviet Union, the Tu-144 was the largest and heaviest transport aircraft that reached Mach 2. As reported by Aerotime.aero, since the aircraft had a design very similar to that of the Anglo-French Concorde (which earned it the nickname “Concordski”), several conspiracy theories involving industrial espionage sparked.

The Tu-144 took off for the first time on May 26, 1970, but its glory was quite short. Its development was delayed after one sample crashed at the 1973 Paris Air Show. Moreover, the plane was unreliable and had questionable passenger experience onboard, which sealed the fate of the Tu-144 in 1978. In May 1978, another Tu-144 (an improved version, named Tu-144D) crashed on a test flight while being delivered, and the passenger fleet was permanently grounded after only 55 scheduled flights and just three years after it entered passenger service in 1975. It continued to carry cargo until 1983. The Tu-144 was later used by the Soviet space program to train pilots of the Buran spacecraft and by NASA for supersonic research.

‘On paper, the Tu-144 was slightly bigger and faster [than the Concorde], peaking at Mach 2.15 (opposed to Concorde’s Mach 2.04) at its slightly higher operating altitude of around 66,000 ft as opposed to Concorde’s 60,000. Both had a near identical cruise speed of 1,320–1,340 mph,’ says Alex Patrick, an aviation expert, on Quora.

‘Saying that, Concorde could supercruise without afterburners at Mach 2, the first aircraft to be able to do so. The Tu-144 required far more use of the afterburners to achieve similar speeds.

‘The Tu-144 could carry around 20 more passengers but had a range around 500 miles less than Concorde’s at roughly 4,000 miles.

‘The Tu-144 was rushed, however. No doubt about it. Concorde had its roots in mid-1950s British aircraft. The first report into a supersonic passenger aircraft was published in 1955 in the UK. It wasn’t until 7 years later, in 1962 that the Soviets put out a preliminary report and still beat Concorde to the first flight.’

Patrick continues;

‘On board, the avionics were considerably more crude, as the Soviets, whilst keeping pace and even leading in many aeronautical developments, lagged far behind with flight control and early computers. Concorde had more computer involvement in flight ability than any passenger aircraft prior, which was required when making minuscule adjustments at Mach 2+. Tu-144 didn’t achieve this and made do with more conventional technology.

‘Of the many corners cut – the Tu-144 suffered extreme cabin noise, lack of cabin insulation and crude air conditioning (to cope with the heat generated by the speed) meant passenger experience was far below the level expected on Concorde. Instead of installing large, loud air conditioning units, Concorde used its own fuel as a coolant.

‘Concorde used carbon fiber in the advanced brakes (one of the first applications of carbon fiber in aeronautics), whilst the Tu-144 had to rely on a parachute to decelerate in time.

‘Bigger and more powerful, but under the surface the Tu-144 lacked the advanced internals, engine, and braking technology, emerging computerized avionics, and passenger comforts that allowed Concorde to fly day in, day out for 25 years whilst its Soviet rival lasted just 3 years as a passenger aircraft, and 8 years as a mail carrier.’

Patrick concludes;

‘On top of that, there simply wasn’t the market for the Tu-144. Being incredibly expensive to run necessitated first-class fare costs for Concorde to be profitable, and communism wasn’t meant to breed a vast number of super-wealthy elite.’

Photo by RIA Novosti archive, via Wikipedia, NASA and Adrian Meredith / Crown Copyright

Supercruising at Mach 2.0 for hours to traverse the Atlantic, Concorde could effectively outrun a nuclear blast and catch up with the sun.

The Concorde supersonic passenger jet airliner was jointly developed and manufactured by Aérospatiale and the British Aircraft Corporation (BAC) under an Anglo-French treaty and was built in twenty samples including six prototypes and development aircraft.

It had a maximum speed of Mach 2.04 (1,354 mph or 2,180 km/h at cruise altitude, over twice the speed of sound), with seating for 92 to 128 passengers. The aircraft entered service in 1976 and continued flying for the next 27 years.

But, as far as is known a photo of a Concorde flying at Mach 2 was never taken.

‘Concorde seems cute and familiar because it was used for transportation and designed in the 60s, but it was an absolute beast. Supercruising at Mach 2.0 for hours to traverse the Atlantic, it could effectively outrun a nuclear blast and catch up with the sun,’ says Andrei Kucharavy, an aviation expert, on Quora.

‘While operational, it was effectively impossible to intercept all the jet fighters of its generation barring a stripped Electric Lightning pushed to the limit – including F-15, F-16, or F-104. Just to take the only known supersonic picture of Concorde [CLICK HERE to read the full story of the only known supersonic photo of Concorde], a completely stripped RAF Tornado had to be pushed to its limit to be able to rendezvous with a super-cruising Concorde. And yet in the end Concorde had to slow down to Mach 1.5 to allow for a good picture to be taken.

‘Think about this picture. A state-of-the-art fighter jet, specialized interceptor, stripped to the bones and pushed to its maximum is rapidly running out of fuel, operational altitude, and range. In the meantime, about 100 people inside the aircraft it was trying to rendezvous with are being served champagne, as it slowly climbed to its operational altitude and accelerated towards its cruising speed that it would maintain for the next couple of hours.

‘Even the F-22, developed almost 50 years after the Concorde and the reigning undisputed air supremacy fighter can only supercruise at Mach 1.8 and its top speed – Mach 2.2 – is the same as for a Tornado. If Concorde was still flying, it is unlikely it would be able to photograph it at Mach 2.0. Even if the Soviets back at the time were willing to lend the Mig-25/Mig-31, it is not entirely clear if it would be able to sustain the level flight with Concorde at Mach 2.0 for long enough to have a picture taken.’

Could the SR-71 Blackbird reconnaisance aircraft have gotten a picture of it easily, as it cruised at up to Mach 3?

Kucharavy explains;

‘Realistically, Mach 2.0 at 60 000 feet is well within the operational envelope of an SR-71, but it’s more the logistics of a double refueling that would have been a problem. SR-71 take-off logistics were quite something. Right after the take-off it had a couple of minutes to get to 25 000 ft and find a tanker and then had at most 2.400 NM to get do the round trip. Significantly shorter if it performed an excursion into the supersonic range and used its afterburners. I believe for a NY-London traverse an SR-71 had to refuel once in the middle, but for the rest of it sustained close to the Mach 3.2. So a parallel flight with Concorde was not out of question, but definitely would have been quite a mission to organize.’

Photo by Adrian Meredith / Crown Copyright

The rumor is… that a test flight SR-71 Blackbird flew over Johnson’s ranch and broke several of his large windows. But he didn’t have the nerve to make a complaint…

What do Zsa Zsa Gabor, President Nixon, and Kelly Johnson all have in common?

Sonic booms!

‘Obviously, the SR 71 broke the sound barrier to get up to 85,000 feet and a speed of 3.2 Mach,’ explains Linda Sheffield Miller (Col Richard (Butch) Sheffield’s daughter, Col. Sheffield was an SR-71 Reconnaissance Systems Officer) on her Facebook Page Habubrats. ‘Often, I would look at the windows of our house at Beale [Air Force Base, AFB] and watched them shake so hard I thought they would break!

‘The SR-71 tried to stay away from major cities, but occasionally it would happen over a large city like Los Angeles.

‘Zsa Zsa Gabor called the police to complain after the London to Los Angeles speed run. Her windows were (supposedly) shattered in her Hollywood Hills home. She was appeased when pilot Buck Adams and RSO Bill Machoreck went to her house and gave her personal autograph

‘President Nixon called the Air Force to complain when the sonic booms broke the windows in his home in Southern California. Even though it was himself who ordered sonic booms 15 seconds apart to be delivered by the SR-71 over the Hanoi Hilton.’

Sonic Booms

Sheffield Miller continues;

‘With aircraft, this phenomenon is caused by bow and stern waves — traveling at the speed of sound — getting forced together (or compressed) because they can’t get out of the way of the faster moving plane. In “smooth flight” the united wave — now a shock wave — starts at the nose of the aircraft and ends at the tail. As the plane passes through, the wave attains a pressure imbalance (called an “N” wave due to its shape) and that’s when the boom happens.

‘The following video features the Audio Recording of SR-71 Blackbird Sonic Booms. Listen here to hear what a double sonic boom sounds like!

‘In reality, there are two booms that happen. One when that reaches the observer and one when the pressure returns to normal.’

Sheffield Miller concludes;

‘Kelly Johnson [The head of Lockheed’s Vaunted Skunk Works, the division that developed the SR-71 Blackbird itself] had a busy life outside Lockheed. He and his wife Althea Louise Young built a house in Encino, in the San Fernando Valley, 10 miles west of Lockheed’s facilities. They kept horses, and eventually acquired a working ranch, Star Lane, in the Santa Ynez Valley, north of Santa Barbara. Johnson maintained his own farm machinery in a 4,800-square-foot shop that he had built, whose huge size and strong construction were a source of his pride. The rumor is… that a test flight SR-71 flew over Johnson’s ranch and broke several of his large windows. But he didn’t have the nerve to make a complaint.’

Photo by CIA, News release by Rogers & Cowan talent agents, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, and U.S. Air Force

The impressive video in this post shows the giant Antonov An-225 Mriya blowing away the perimeter fence of the base runway at the moment of the takeoff.

Taken on Jun. 24, 2021, at RAF Brize Norton by our friend Dafydd Phillips, the impressive video in this post shows the giant Antonov An-225 Mriya blowing away the perimeter fence of the base runway at the moment of the takeoff.

‘The Antonov 225 Mriya gave us one final treat as it departed Brize Norton to head home to Kyiv in Ukraine. A quick blast on all six was enough to destroy the fence at the end of runway 25,’ says Phillips.

According to Gloucestershire Live, the Antonov arrived yesterday at Brize Norton from Karachi.

The giant aircraft, capable of lifting 700 tonnes, is a part of the NATO forces‘ withdrawal process as foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

The aircraft is carrying three Royal Airforce (RAF) helicopters from Afghanistan to the UK.

The An-225 participated in the COVID-19 pandemic relief effort, conducting flights to deliver medical supplies from China to other parts of the world.

It is powered by six turbofan engines and is the heaviest aircraft ever built, with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes.

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.

Photo by Dafydd Phillips