For over a 12 months, a large An-124 Ruslan cargo plane has been sitting on the tarmac of Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. The jet, with serial numbers RA-82078, had landed there on February 27, 2022 carrying a cargo of Covid-19 rapid tests—just 4 days after Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine. That very same day, Canada’s transport minister closed Canadian airspace to all Russian-operated aircraft, keeping the An-124 grounded.
Following an April 11, 2023 meeting between Ukrainian and Canadian prime ministers Denys Shmyhal and Justin Trudeau, Ottawa now plans to confiscate the plane and provides it to Ukraine. This decision was made on the premise of a legal ruling by a Ukraine court that Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency had illegally approved air-worthiness certification for all twelve of Volga Dnepr’s An-124s.
Antonov Airlines, a branch of the Ukrainian state-owned company which designed the An-124, will undoubtedly receive the craft. And so as to add insult to injury, Russia remains to be on the hook for over $330,000 USD equivalent in parking fees for the over 400 days spent in impoundment.
Aptly codenamed Condor by NATO, the 200-ton jet—able to hefting 150 tons of cargo and roughly 50 tons of fuel—is the reigning T-Rex of heavy lift aviation. It’s the biggest operational aircraft on this planet, ever since Ukraine’s even larger An-225 cargo jet was destroyed within the battle of Hostomel airport last 12 months. A uniquely upgraded An-124-100-150M was also damaged within the Hostomel fight.
Because the early Nineteen Nineties, these big haulers have been chartered by each civilian and military clients for rapid delivery of heavy, large-volume cargos including railway cars, industrial turbines, helicopters, tanks and, once, even a whale.
Antonov Airlines retains a fleet of 5 An-124-100s which were re-homebased at Halle airport in Leipzig, Germany after the Russian invasion.
Upon resuming operations last 12 months, Antonov Airlines anticipated that the aircraft would fly as much as 385 more missions, involving 1,270 landings. In August, the An-124s were all renamed after Ukrainian cities that experienced heavy fighting within the war, including Bucha, Irpin, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Ohktyrka, Kherson and Mariupol.
Three more Volga-Dnepr An-124s (serial numbers RA-82043, 82045 and 82046) are also under impoundment, gathering dust at Leipzig.
Germany’s plans for these impounded aircraft (one in all which lacks engines) remain unclear. Besides Antonov and Volga-Dnepr, the craft type is operated by Russia’s military, and one is flown by UAE-based Maximus Airlines.
Flight of the Condor
Ukraine was the only proprietor of the world’s largest aircraft—the 314-ton An-225 Mriya (“Dream”) transport plane, operated by its domestic Antonov Airlines from Hostomel Airport near Kyiv. This was effectively an enlarged An-124 with a distinct tail, specially built to hold the Soviet Buran space shuttle.
When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine on February 23, Russian paratroopers seized Hostomel in a helicopter landing operation, planning to make use of it as a launch pad to capture the Ukrainian capital. To their surprise, the Ukrainians counterattacked quickly and vigorously with air and ground forces, stopping additional troops from landing in the world and causing Putin’s attempted snatch-and-grab of Kyiv to collapse in shambles.
When Ukrainian troops recaptured Hostomel for good on April 2, they found Mriya in its burn-out hangar, its front section smashed by shelling.
The lack of the likely irrecoverable Mriya left it’s smaller—but still ginormous—sister, the Antonov An-124 Ruslan, with the title of largest on this planet.
The An-124 began development within the Seventies as “Project 400”, a Soviet counterpart to the massive American C-5 Galaxy heavy-haul cargo jet. The An-124 closely resembled the C-5 Galaxy, including its folding nose cone used to facilitate loading and offloading.
Nevertheless, the Soviets brought technical flourishes to the concept, including a computerized fly-by-wire flight controls system and each ground-scanning navigation and weather radars. The primarily aluminum aircraft also incorporated 5% lightweight composite materials, in addition to ultra-hard (and ultra-expensive) titanium flooring for the cargo deck.
A complete of 24 massive wheels on 10 gear-fairings supported the aircraft, each with in-built auxiliary power units. Those wheels will be deflated to crouch the jet down for ease of unloading. Propulsion was provided by 4 Lotarev D-18T turbofan engines—the primary fuel-efficient high-bypass engines developed by the Soviet Union—which could also reverse thrust to help with landing.
Ultimately, in comparison with the C-5, the An-124 boasted 20% more internal volume and 17% higher maximum cargo weight. The huge aircraft could carry up to a few primary battle tanks, five BMP infantry fighting vehicles, or a whole mini submarine. Its cargo bay even included a 30-ton capability crane to facilitate loading and unloading.
Unlike the C-5, nevertheless, the Ruslan lacked inflight-refueling capability, and its primary hold wasn’t fully pressurized to support passengers or paratroopers—though it does have an upper passenger deck with seating for 88 personnel.
Despite making its first flight in December of 1982, followed by an unveiling on the Paris Airshow in 1985, the An-124 wasn’t fully operationally reliable until 1991. Altogether, 53 An-124s were built (including the prototype), with parts for 2 more left unassembled. Antonov built eighteen of those in Ukraine, while the rest were built by the Ulyanovsk factory in Russia.
Of those aircraft, 22 were built or converted into the civilian An-124-100 aircraft, stripped of military systems and fit with improved D-18T series 3 engines with for much longer service lives (18,000 hours). 4 An-124s were lost in deadly accidents that claimed 97 lives between them, with a fifth An-124 heavily damaged in a belly landing after losing engine power.
Even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union, nevertheless, Antonov began arranging international cargo flights in partnership with British company Air Foyle, which included delivering U.S. Patriot missiles in the course of the Persian Gulf War.
This began a trend of the An-124 fleet seemingly ending up providing more transportation services to NATO-member militaries than Russia’s armed forces, particularly during ‘War on Terror’-era operations within the Middle East and Afghanistan. These services included delivering Canadian Leopard 2 tanks for combat in that latter period. The partnership with Air Foyle resulted in 2005, and Antonov as an alternative leased twelve An-124s to a consortium with Russia called Volga-Dnepr, while also operating its own Antonov Airlines.
The -100s were steadily modernized, with latest avionics allowing downsizing of flight crew from six to 4 within the -100M submodel. Then, in 2005, Antonov also refit a singular An-124-100-150M aircraft with a D-18T Series 4 engine, boasting 10% increased thrust, in turn and increasing max carrying capability and range to 150 tons and 9,631 miles, respectively.
An-124 cargo missions included transporting the 4th-century Axium obelisk—weighing 160 tons—from Rome back to Ethiopia, the dismantled components of a U.S. Navy EP-3E spy plane that forced landed in China’s Hainan island, a Falcon Heavy rocket, a large Putzmeister concrete pump airlifted from Germany to Japan to assist cool of the melt-down Fukushima reactor, and large quantities of masks and tests in the course of the peak COVID-19 era.
The An-124 also established world records for the heaviest-ever lift—carrying a 187.6-ton German generator to Armenia—and the longest unrefueled flight ever, traversing over 12,520 miles in 25 hours and half-hour.
A Condor also starred within the James Bond film Die One other Day (see 4:14 in below clip).
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The Volga-Dnepr partnership fell apart after Russia’s initial invasions of Ukraine in 2014. Nevertheless, the airline was capable of proceed operations in Western countries until sanctions in 2022 grounded 4 of its An-124s.
In line with an assessor, Russia’s assault on Hostomel caused damages that may require $3 billion and five years to repair. Besides the desolation of the Mriya, it also resulted within the destruction of an An-74 and Ant-26-100 aircraft in Antonov’s fleet, and damaged the unique An-124-100-150M.
The Mriya is unlikely to be restorable—though, given adequate resources, Antonov could try and assemble a second never-completed An-225 airframe. That option, nevertheless, is estimated to cost roughly $500 million.
Russian military An-124s have been lively within the war in Ukraine, used to move Tochka-U and Iskander ballistic missiles for attacks. Ukraine’s now Leipzig-based An-124s also are lively. While reportedly prioritizing missions transporting humanitarian and military aid for the Ukrainian government and NATO, in addition they still fly business flights, akin to transporting a gas turbine from the UAE to the UK.