The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/an-225-worlds-largest-airplane/index.html

by pseudolus • 6 years ago

104 100 6 years ago

They don’t make ‘em like they used to

iagovar3• 6 years ago

Antonov is really struggling to keep the shop open, I wonder if it's possible to keep such plane operational with the manufacturer on the brink of bankrupcy. Las time I checked Boing was supplying some parts that couldn't get imported from Russia now, but AFAIK the are not really having many customers.

aww_dang2• 6 years ago

I don't see Antonov disappearing anymore than GM, Boeing or Volkswagen. I'm sure the Russian state will continue to protect them in one form or another.

possiblelion• 6 years ago

that's the problem, Antonov is based in Kyiv, Ukraine

Maakuth• 6 years ago

Antonov is a Ukrainian state enterprise, no problem for Russia to see them go under.

baybal211• 6 years ago

Antonov Airlines is said to have made a windfall on COVID supplies recently, with countries, and relief organisations putting bigger, and bigger bids.

prehistoricdog4• 6 years ago

The reasons it's not going to bankrupt, as well as will not develop any AN-225v2 are: Antonov is not a private company. As a part of Ministry of Defense, it may let itself to be unprofitable and not competitive, cause the losses would be covered by budget.

And yes, it is not considered a desirable workplace among locals due to rather low salaries and predominantly well-aged equipment. Moreover, Antonov suffered from breaking it's supply chain in 2014. Apart from that, everything's absolutely great! Obviously, it is not the Golden Age of Antonov's assembly, nor it's development, nor anything else, but it happened so I live 1 block away from Antonov design bureau and every morning I see quite impressive flow of employees heading in there. I mean, of course, except the shutdown period and it's just my personal 'seems quite impressive'.

PS English is not my native, so it may be clunky or poorly readable)

iagovar3• 6 years ago

How is Ukraine doing with its tech and military industry? Are they keeping up with the times or slow fading away? I don't see them doing much active development, amd I wrong?

clon• 6 years ago

I never knew they had a second, unfinished, airframe ready for assembly.

LeonM• 6 years ago

I remember a Discovery program showing what supposedly was an AN-225 airframe parked in a field somewhere. The story was that it was finished, but never certified for flight, and was eventually used for parts to keep the one 225 operational.

I can't find evidence online to back this story up though. Not sure of this was the second airframe shown in the article, or that this may have been a third airframe.

coldcode• 6 years ago

Whatever its future, that is one monster plane I would love to see fly. Given the 747 has no future now and even the A380 is not that popular and might vanish, we may never see such a huge plane again.

zhte415• 6 years ago

Saw it once visiting DLC, probably the only time visiting that airport, this was ~2008. The airport is pretty downtown; fences at each end of the runway (3,300m, pretty tight) were removed and the motorway immediately adjunct to the airport shut down. It was reported as delivering oil/gas supplies for the shipyard and no smaller plane could do it. Searched for a local media report but seems pains of time mean they're no longer up.

kilroy123• 6 years ago

747s are still used for cargo. I saw one fly over my head just yesterday.

kjs3• 6 years ago

Yeah...while there probably won't be many/any new 747s built, they'll probably be flying cargo for many decades. Last II knew, FedEx was still flying 25 or so Douglas DC-10 cargos, more than 30 years after the last one was built.

artpi• 6 years ago

As a political stunt, Polish government has chartered this plane to deliver medical supplies to Poland. What a sight! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQPcMcGVZ8

However, the costs were insane - around $3 million . Transporting the same amount of cargo with 777 would cost about $1 milion.

But the political stunt was priceless.

naivedevops• 6 years ago

"The uploader has not made this video available in your country"

TomMarius• 6 years ago

Having countries matter on the internet now feels like going back to the 90's after living in the future for a while. :/

moltar• 6 years ago

Canada too. I think it landed twice in Montreal.

https://youtu.be/OGbtUHEYJ3M

nuccy4• 6 years ago

Maybe it was a political stunt, but actually there are two justification of that.

1) The volume. The masks and other protective gear is volume-demanding cargo, since the overall density including packing (boxes) is low. The Boeing 777 Freighter (777F) has 518m3 of cargo volume on main deck [1], An-225 has 1200m3 [2], so the price per 1m3 of volume is 1930$ and 2500$ respectively (ratio 1.3).

2) The demand and the quarantine itself. During March-April demand on masks was enormous, everyone tried to buy them, some countries even tried to take over deliveries for other ones. China and many other countries were not accepting flights, so arranging even a single flight was challenging (thats why An-225 was flying through Almaty city that many times when making China-Europe routes, all other airports simply didn't accept any planes for transit and refueling). As a result, one huge plane was much more beneficial than 2-3 smaller ones.

[1] https://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_...

[2] https://www.antonov-airlines.com/our-fleet/an-225

Edit: correcting An-225 cargo volume from 1100m3 to 1200m3 using data from the official website.

baybal211• 6 years ago

Antonov airlines have a much more cheaper, and more available An-124 with 1000m³ useful cargo volume. An even more easily available, and thus cheaper to hire, 747 has 500 to 600m³ volume in different configurations.

untilted• 6 years ago

Another factor that was mentioned when it flew medical supplies to Montreal is that the An-225 always flies with all the crew it needs, including replacements, and so it was feasible for the plane to wait for a few hours while the logistics were being sorted out (e.g. cash-and-carry deals right on the tarmac, the situation was reportedly crazy in march/april). With another plane/airline, the time slot may be too tight because of crew schedules, etc.

pseudolus• 6 years ago

There's no shortage of documentaries on Youtube on the AN-225 [0][1].

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hsh2GSHM2TA

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sggQqdvqHs

Slump• 6 years ago

"...20 tons of fuel per hour..." holy cow. Pretty impressive statistics all around, apparently the A380 uses closer to 12.5 tons per hour to put it in perspective.

baybal211• 6 years ago

Pretty impressive given that:

  Type MTOW [kg] ICAO category
  Antonov An-225 640,000 Heavy
  Airbus A380-800 575,000 Super

and that 225 is made with much less than an ideal aerodynamics, heavy frame, 6 thrust reversers, and oversized control surfaces to accommodate external cargo.

Its 6 engines are also prehistoric. D-18T was made with a much more focus on getting the highest take off thrust over cruise speed performance.

Such a large, wide wing apparently gets very little aerodynamic losses, even with all above considered.

perl4ever2• 6 years ago

Why is 60% more fuel for 10% more weight "pretty impressive"? I mean, you just listed several reasons why it might be "not bad", but what's your baseline expectation that makes it impressive?

ominous_prime• 6 years ago

Curious where you got the category info there. ICAO doesn't have a super category (proposed designation was `J`, but they don't publish anything under that).

FAA list the 225 as NOWGT, which puts it over "heavy", requiring 10nm separation.

Theodores• 6 years ago

Concorde was only 26 tonnes an hour, although it did use two tonnes taxiing to the runway.

jjoonathan• 6 years ago

Saturn V: 20 tons of fuel per second. Yes, it's a silly comparison, but also fun.

nitrogen2• 6 years ago

The pumps alone that can deliver that volume are an engineering marvel

nuccy4• 6 years ago

Few facts from the excellent An-225 pilot interview and the plane tour video [1] put by @prehistoricdog in this comment section:

- The plane, when empty, can fly for about 16 hours without refueling covering about 13000 km

- Cruise speed is 800 km/h (maximum 840 km/h)

- Fully fueled plane can include 350-370 m.tons of kerosene (around 450000 liters)

- When empty it consumes 16 m.tons of fuel every hour, when fully loaded with cargo - 22 m.tons/h

- The weight of the plane is 290 m.tons (with all the cargo loading equipment and spares carried along)

- There are 35 seats and 20 beds for crew, engineers and cargo escort personnel

- Important for plane spotter, I guess :) Right before departure, at the beginning of a runway, the plane always stays for 4 minutes stationary with engines running at 70% thrust to heat them up, which is imposed by their manufacturer

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TX9L62_Eac (in russian with english subs)

major505• 6 years ago

2 years ago they landed this plane here in Brazil, when they camt to pick hidroeletrical generator parts. I gone with a plane enthusiast friend to see the thing take off. I know the phisics, but amazes me that something that big can fly.

Theres hope that more of this are made in the next years. It looks like China is interested in making a few units;

duxup3• 6 years ago

It always amazed me that you could strap a space shuttle to a modified 747 and ... fly.

The whole idea of "just strap it to another flying machine and move it that way" seems like something my 4 year old would come up with.

It is clear my mental model of 'things that can fly good' is deficit when we see things like the AN-225 and etc.

nickff2• 6 years ago

Interestingly, there was some doubt within NASA as to whether the 747 piggyback was a good idea. One of the proponents of the idea was a scale model builder, and made a model to demonstrate it; the model's success was persuasive enough that they continued to study the idea.

In the end, the 747-Space Shuttle combo actually has better crosswind landing characteristics than a normal 747, but it has atrocious fuel economy.

strictnein• 6 years ago

Seeing it take off is really something. I used to work on the grounds of an international airport, and one of these flew in one day to pick up a crane or something.

It dwarfed the other planes, 747s included. And seeing it slowly rumbled down the runway gave you the impression that there was simply no way it would have enough speed by the time it reached the end, but somehow it lifted off and flew.

dylan604• 6 years ago

It is weird how the size of a plane screws with how our brains interpret the speed.

prehistoricdog4• 6 years ago

here is a great tour inside the aircraft with 1 of it's pilots (in russian, but with a comprehensible English subs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9TX9L62_Eac

whatch• 6 years ago

Really enjoyed the video (I speak Russian though).

prehistoricdog4• 6 years ago

Couldn't agree more)

myself2482• 6 years ago

Wow, just wow.

I knew it carried its whole crew with it, but the cabins are almost a little hotel, two kitchens! Three sleeping quarters! And that's all just tucked into the parts that aren't used for cargo.

I got a few good chuckles out of the back-and-forth, just from the subtitle, I'm sure it's even better if you speak Russian. Well worth a watch, thank you for posting it!

prehistoricdog4• 6 years ago

There was a piece, where the pilot explained why airports are not in favor of accepting AN225 for landing and takeoff on theirs runways: they have to check the runway surface after landing/takeoff. but even more crucial (not now, but in those times) is that suitable for landing airports are in most cases are those with high throughput of aircrafts and tight schedule and according to the international safety regulations it is possible give permittion for the next takeoff only after 7-10 min due to turbulent wake(is it the right term?). while common passenger flights have an interval of 30 sec

0x737368• 6 years ago

Small correction with regards to AN-124's name, Ruslan doesn't stand for "condor", condor is its NATO reporting name, Ruslan is just a popular Russian name.

codeduck• 6 years ago

largest by payload - unless the Stratolaunch gets uprated.

scottlocklin• 6 years ago

Jeez CNN is really terrible. The Myasishchev VM-T didn't "carry the spacecraft unassembled" as anyone with eyes can plainly see, and the AN-225 was designed as a replacement for the VM-T (and, truth be told, as a sort of stunt).

_ph_• 6 years ago

In the linked article the image clearly shows, the Buran was not fully assembled. For example the vertical tail rudder was missing, and probably a lot of other things which might have decreased the weight of the Buran.

rob74• 6 years ago

Well, the plane shown in the first photo is clearly carrying an incomplete spacecraft. To find out that it was in fact able to carry the completely assembled Buran, you'd have to actually read the article ("During another flight in 1988 — this time with a flight-worthy Buran orbiter"), and that's probably too much to ask nowadays...

g8oz• 6 years ago

> Jeez CNN is really terrible.

Related: it was very satisfying to watch uBlock Origin block no less than 82 scripts/trackers.

kd5bjo• 6 years ago

The H-4 Hercules could plausibly be considered larger. It has a larger wingspan, height, and cargo volume, but only ever flew once (for about a mile) and has significantly lower weight capacity. It was also bult several decades before the AN-225.

cf https://www.theaviationzone.com/factsheets/hk1_specs.asp

avmich• 6 years ago

Stratolaunch has widest wingspan, Hercules has highest height and Mriya is the longest/heaviest. So... they are all demonstrations for how we learned to build extreme aircrafts.

hedgehog• 6 years ago

Hour-long video showing parts of a whole mission: https://youtube.com/watch?v=eNxTq9RrOs0

egorfine4• 6 years ago

I have been inside this airplane and I've got some pics to share: https://egorfine.com/photo/mriya/

c0nsumer2• 6 years ago

Off topic, but I wanted to say thank-you. I've recently had to move away from an antiquated Gallery2 install, and these photos had me wondering how you were hosting a personal gallery. This led me to Juicebox which seems super-cool and perfect for meeting a lingering need. Thank you!

egorfine4• 6 years ago

Although there were no updates to Juicebox for quite a time... :-(

GoblinSlayer• 6 years ago

Looks like Nostromo: big, old, dark, messy spaceship.

baybal211• 6 years ago

Think of it, that entire electronic automation suite on board can be now replaced with a single 1$ smartphone chipset.

ben7799• 6 years ago

Thanks for this.. killer photos..

Was this at an airshow? Was someone following you around to make sure you didn't pull on any wires or anything you weren't supposed to be touching?

myself2482• 6 years ago

The last photo in the deck shows the plane with an engine removed; this makes me think the photos were taken during maintenance.

egorfine4• 6 years ago

Shot during maintenance as many places you see are not accessible at all. Like, the booster systems are not human-accessible unless you are willing to disassemble part of the plane or crawl inside a very small and dark tube.

shadowprofile77• 6 years ago

Great shots. I love interior photos of old military planes and for many of them, what's available is sorely lacking in quality, detailed exploration or perspective. Yours are a fine contrast to those tendencies.

The spare tires had me wondering though. I mean, if one were to blow upon landing, wouldn't that be such a disaster that having a spare inside the plane becomes sort of irrelevant? Or does the AN-225 have so many wheels (which I suspect given its huge size) that it could indeed blow a couple and still continue landing stably enough for a spare to be useful afterwards? On the other hand, in the air I assume they can hardly replace them and why would they blow while retracted anyhow? No expert but those images in particular sparked some extra curiosity.

nuccy4• 6 years ago

There is a nice video listed below with a pilot of this plane (in russian but with decent english subtitles), he answers to this question. Wheels indeed deflate (not blow) occasionally, this happens when breaks overheat and special thermal plate (at 200C) melts and deflates the wheel gradually, which works as an indicator of overheated break/tyre. Since it happens gradually, there is no danger for the plane itself. The parts for this plane are not that common (they may be shared with An-124 though), so apparently it is easier to carry few wheels than wait for their delivery. The plane caries 10 m.tons of equipment anyway just to load/unload the cargo, so few wheels probably are not that much of a deal.

egorfine4• 6 years ago

They have to carry lots of spare parts due to uniqueness of the plane. Replacement of tires is a routine job; much more cumbersome is her aircraft tow bar. It has to be unloaded from her prior to towing, but it can be unloaded only through the main cargo door. This is why Mriya may occupy the landing strip for half an hour before it can be towed. A major pain.

Synaesthesia• 6 years ago

I saw it once at an air show in Pretoria, along with some other cool planes like the Sukhoi SU-35. The Russians actually loaded up all their other planes into the Antonov, and flew it straight from Moscow to Pretoria in one shot!

jupp0r• 6 years ago

It's crazy how this can be economical with economics of scale=1. Every replacement part for maintenance must be custom-made, there must be no market for trained pilots and technicians on that particular plane, etc.

sbalea• 6 years ago

They cross-train for AN-124, which is quite similar, though obviously smaller.

Animats• 6 years ago

Paul Allen's Stratolaunch has a wider wingspan, but less cargo capacity. Wonder where that monster will end up. It's intended for high-altitude rocket launches and not useful for much else.

m0zg2• 6 years ago

I don't think it's the "Cold War" that created it per se - it was the Space Race. We need another one of those, doesn't matter with whom.

smabie• 6 years ago

And the space race was created by the Cold War. Without the Cold War, I doubt we would have ever sent a man to the moon.

m0zg2• 6 years ago

True. But I feel like Space Race eventually took a life of its own, and it was not military in nature. You don't do joint space programs if you're having a "war".

The AN-225: How the Cold War created the world's largest airplane

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