The most popular: the AN-225 Mriya
It is one thing when an ordinary airplane rises into the air, even if it is designed for a couple of hundred passengers, and quite another thing when a creation of the human mind, tens of meters long, capable of carrying hundreds of tons of cargo, appears in the sky.
At various times the honorary title of the largest aircraft in the world were different winged machines. For example, among them in the 1930s was a unique eight-engine propeller plane ANT-20 “Maxim Gorky”. Today there are other leaders in this field, although the records they set many decades ago still hold. “Around the World” invites you to get acquainted with some of these record-breakers.
The most incredible: the AN-225 Mriya.
This is the plane with the biggest payload in the world (it can carry 250 tons of cargo) and the biggest takeoff weight (more than 640 tons), as well as the biggest in length and wingspan out of the ones put into operation. Let’s deal with the dimensions first: the length of “Mriya” is 84 meters, and its wingspan is 88,4 meters.
The cargo cabin of “Mriya” is an airtight space of 43 meters long, 6.4 meters wide and 4.4 meters high (that is, about the size of a two-storey house), it can accommodate, for example, 50 cars. The airplane was invented and built in 1984-1988 at Kiev Mechanical Plant for transportation of “Buran” space ship and carrier rocket parts from production site to launch site, and also if necessary “Buran” as a whole: it was supposed to be placed on the “back” of “Mriya”.
However, this giant did not fulfill its main duties for a long time: by 1990, all the works under the Energia-Buran program were folded up, and the An-225 was half-assembled from 1994 to 2001. By 2001 it was restored and since then it has been regularly used to carry heavy loads, including record-breaking transport operations.
“Mriya” has already made flights with the longest (42.1-meter wind turbine blades) and the heaviest monocargo (generator weighing 174 tons), as well as with the largest total weight – 253.8 tons. Altogether the Mriya has more than 200 world records of this kind. The plane is a single specimen, which is operated by the Ukrainian Antonov Airlines. However, it is possible that in a year or so, the Antonov Design Bureau in Kiev and the Chinese AICC will complete the second one.
