World's only An-225 destroyed by Russian airstrikes
ch-aviation.com
ch-aviation.com
I had the luck of seeing this plane on approach to IAH airport while driving in Houston.
For the first few minutes, it looked like a normal size plane, but felt too low and too slow. Then for the next few minutes, it kept getting bigger and bigger. Then I saw it had 6 engines. And a tail wing that seemed as large as a normal plane’s wingspan. I was lucky that it crossed right in front of me as I was near the airport (about 2.5 miles from the runway). It looked so low, so slow, and just massive. I went home and figured out what it was by googling it. That time it was transporting part of an oil rig. I tried to find it to go see again ever since, but I could never get a clear schedule and it didn’t line up with where I was in the world. I was telling my wife the other week that this was something I’d like to seek out. It’s something that anyone on this site, aviation enthusiast or not, would have appreciated seeing.
https://twitter.com/samchuiphotos/status/1497963593563791361...
What you're describing matches my experience watching C-5M for the first time, heading in to land at what was Marine Corps Base Hawaii. I was out walking and watched one flying around the bay, turning in to land. Thought it was low and slow. I remember quite a feeling of cognitive dissonance, as subconscious parts of my brain were refusing to accept what my senses were really saying. Then this slowly dawning realisation no, it's bloody huge! I stopped in my tracks with my jaw dropping.
To some degree I still didn't believe it, until it had actually touched down at the strip in the distance, and I could see how it was in scale next to other planes and buildings.
I haven't seen the AN-225, guess I never will. Comparing specs I'm staggered.. I can't fathom what it would be like to see that one. C5 on left, AN-225 right:
Wingspan: 222' 9" <-> 290'
Length: 247' 10" <-> 275' 7"
> The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Ukrainian: Антонов Ан-225 Мрія, lit. ''dream' or 'inspiration''; NATO reporting name: Cossack) was a strategic airlift cargo aircraft designed in the 1980s by the Antonov Design Bureau in Soviet Ukraine. It was originally developed as an enlargement of the Antonov An-124 to transport Buran-class orbiters, and only one example was ever completed.
RIP beautiful bird.
Comparing the Mrija to heavy military airlifters (Ruslan, Galaxy, Globemaster III...) would make more sense.
The impressive thing about the Mrija is that it's both good at lifting volume (over-wing transport) and weight.
An other interesting bit is Mriya’s hold was pressurised (though apparently relatively low, it was not a plane for paras), neither dreamlifter nor beluga have pressurised holds.
> Comparing the Mrija to heavy military airlifters (Ruslan, Galaxy, Globemaster III...) would make more sense.
It still dwarfs them all since it’s an enlarged version of the Ruslan (124). It could carry almost twice the weight a 124 can.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_B-36_Peacemaker#Specif...
Funny ATC comms when this amazing plane landed in Oakland: https://youtu.be/UFwQiaH5ZsU
The controller has basically arranged an ad-hoc photoshoot, sending planes to the best positions for viewing the Antonov :)
I presumed Antonov Airlines was a Russian airline, so I was wondering why the Russians would destroy their own planes.
But Antonov Airlines is a Ukrainian company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonov_Airlines
The plane was designed in Soviet (Russian) Ukraine (ie before 1991) to carry the Soviet (Russian) space shuttle.
edited to say Soviet, not Russian
I'm using the term 'Russian Ukraine' because it describes the fact that it was part of the USSR when created. Its not my own term - I read this earlier today, and I think it indicates the placement in time accurately.
Do you object to the term 'Russian Ukraine'?
And what does my age have to do with it? How old are you?
Edited to say - 'Soviet Ukraine' is probably an even better term.
russia and ukraine are tied and its not offensive or wrong to say something like "russian ukraine"
This is the reason why we should never redraw lines on a map over historical claims. It gets messy fast.
Moscow, and future tsarist Imperial Russia, happened much later
Is it wrong? I don't know, is it wrong to call the Sun cold, or the Universe small? Maybe not. Googling "russian ukraine" will not result with articles about Ukraine, it will result with news about the war between Russia and Ukraine.
Can you point to some respectable sources that use the term "Russian Ukraine"?
This is wrong on so many levels :)
In times of Kievan Rus Moscow was a far province of forests and marches. Kyiv was the capital.
What you're saying basically: "Italy (Ukraine) was always owned by France (Russia) because Roman Empire (Kievan Rus) was the first centralized state there".
If you insist on applying modern names to historical states it was the other way around - Ukraine "owned" Russia back then.
Also for a few centuries Ukraine was owned by Mongols, Lithuanians and Poles. And Russia was only starting to exist (and wasn't called Russia at first - just Muscovy). But that's besides the point.
So white russia means west russia ( west of russia ). Red and black ruthenia means south ruthenia and north ruthenia. White, gold and blue hordes, you get the idea.
If you ever wonder what made white russians white as opposed to other russians, not you know. For the longest time, I thought it was because it snowed more in belarus.
https://spacenews.com/the-long-road-to-vostochny-inside-russ...
It was one of a kind.
During the last few years it's been primarily chartered for humanitarian aid missions, largely in support of the response to Covid-19 delivering PPE, medication and equipment.
Not to mention it being a national symbol and point of pride of the Ukrainian people.
It was / is always there yet people still having fun and care about all kinds of things. This is how we were "designed".
Meanwhile, the Beluga XL only has a max takeoff weight of 500k lbs.
The AN-225 had a max takeoff weight of 1.4m lbs.
https://www.flightglobal.com/air-transport/airbus-setting-up...
I guess they could but then again, not sure how their customers feel when you enter their very own segment long term.
[1] https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1498406751749611521 [2] https://twitter.com/typesfast/status/1497656877731094528
The Beluga has especially low (not to mention unpressurised) lifting capabilities, it can only lift about 45 tonnes. The XL can lift a bit more, but the main change was internal volume.
The Dreamlifter is better (by quite a bit), but also way short.
An other issue is because both were designed for ferrying airline parts between plants neither is autonomous: both need lifting gantries (especially the beluga but the dreamlifter isn't exactly ground-level), and the dreamlifter needs dedicated trucks to open and close its tail.
Meanwhile the Antonovs are fully autonomous. Both the 124 and 225 were roll-on/roll-off (and able to "kneel" for easier access, not sure about the 225 but the 124 even packs extension ramps for even shallower angles), with a very capable internal crane. On the 124, the crane even extends out back so you can just drop containers there and let the loadmaster handle it. They even carry a bunch of spare parts and a maintenance team. In fact they even carry their own tow bar.
Also what do you do when the plane you're rated for is destroyed?
Presumably there are numerous other reasons you already wouldn't want it to be the only plane you were flying, so you just fly the others a bit more?
For people looking at it from afar it was an amazing sight, but I expect for the crew it was mostly monday. If you listen at their ATC transmissions they sound jaded and bored even for slavic pilots (whereas ATC and other pilots nearby sound like kids at candy store).
I don’t know if the price sheets were ever public, but it would not surprise me to learn that you could charter two 124s for the price of the 225, with more flexibility to boot (the 225 had no rear cargo door, no passenger compartment, and obviously more concerning airfield size requirements — mostly owing to its size and takeoff distance, the landing gear is so overbuilt it’s supposedly got a pretty light ground pressure compared to other large aircrafts).
They had an office in London for booking and planning so it must have earned them some decent wedge, especially without any direct competitors.
I don't know how much maintenance it needed in between though.
Keep in mind while Mriya was a towering giant, the An-124 is literally the next best thing. You'd only call on the 225 if the 124 did not suffice either in lift or in volume[0]; of possibly in the rare cases where no 124 was available, the 225 was, and you didn't mind paying a premium.
[0] mostly in length as the 124 and the 225 holds have the same cross-section of 6.4m wide and 4.4 high, but the 225's is 6 meters longer.
That was something that caught my eye in the picture, it seems to have an endless number of tires on the ground.
Interestingly it’s not such a high number, the C5 galaxy has 24 in the MLG and and 4 at the nose, despite being slightly lighter than the An-124 (it’s older though). The C5 looks a bit less weird from the side because its MLG is organised in 4 sets of 6 with each set having one pair at the front, and two pairs side-by-side at the back. So from the side it looks like it has 4 pairs per side rather than the actual 6 (it makes the C5 look absolutely alien from the bottom though).
Not sure if all of the cockpit is in that sim; there are 6 seats!
I expect the pilots all started out flying other types, so will go back to doing that.
That would be correct, like the AN-124 the An-225 has a crew of 6 (plus 2 loadmasters I think?). While the planes were retrofit and modernised they kept a pretty heavy crew scheme, nominal crew is 2 pilots, 2 FE, and 2 comms. Might be that they didn’t see the need to change the crew scheme, or might be the origins in strategic military transportation (the C5 also has a hefty crew with FEs).
The 124 also has a passenger cabin which can hold 80 but I don’t think they’d kept that in the 225.
Even the B-2 Spirit bomber, most likely the most expensive aircraft only costs $2.1 billion.
https://www.aeroinside.com/16738/antonov-an-225-at-kyiv-host...
And if you believe that will happen, I have a bridge to sell you…
There’s a lot of ways this war can go, but that it should somehow end with Russia paying reparations to Ukraine is rather unlikely. And that the Ukrainian government would then spend a fortune of those (badly needed) reparations to build a new An-225 is even less likely.
[1]: https://tubitv.com/series/300004925/aircraft-exceptional-pla...
From the article: "It will cost over USD3 billion to restore the plane [...]".
This seems extremely high. I'd expect maybe high hundreds of millions. I appreciate that they're hardly like-for-like, but the A380 unit cost was something like $400M, which I think has maybe double the tonnage of the An-225. Where does the extra couple of billion come from?
There was only one An-225 built, and it was built 34 years ago. Presumably the tooling and much of the manufacturing knowledge is long gone. Antonov as an aircraft manufacturer was barely a going concern before all this - it's fallen a long way from its Soviet heyday. They haven't built a single aircraft since 2016 - and I can't imagine having a battle fought at your main facility helped things.
Making one of something always costs a lot more than making many.
Edit: I misread your comment...
No invasion, no destroyed An-225. No Russian airstrike, no destroyed An-225.
Airstrike has a specific meaning. From what I understand Russian attack on the airport was primarily an assault by airborne infantry. It's entirely possible that the Antonov was destroyed by a Russian munition. It still doesn't mean it was a result of a Russian airstrike.
It's a useful distinction, and I wager most people would consider the efficient cause to be the appropriate cause in a sentence like "object destroyed by causal subject".
Otherwise we end up with difficulty parsing "Russian MiG destroyed by Russia", are we saying it's all Russia's fault, or that Russian forces shot their own jet?
I am sure there wouldn't have been a nice for any kind of Ukrainian weaponry, let alone artillery strikes if Russia didn't forcefully capture said airfield in the first place.
More seriously. Damn. I hadn’t had any non hedged confirmation of the destruction before :( this kind of settles it.
> Ukraine says the An-225 was destroyed on the 26th. And their artillery strike came on the 27th.
In any case, it's Russia who attacked, so it's not like whose shelling actually reached the plane is very important when it comes to responsibility.
https://s30121.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screen-Sho...
That is North direction. Right toward the Russian forces which at the time had made that huge advance through Chernobyl toward Kiev. The trace in the pavement points to a large and fast shell or missile. Ukrainians are using up to 203mm which looks too small for that trace in the pavement. Also making that long trace in concrete pavement suggests low angle which for artillery would mean relatively close position - bringing large caliber like 203mm that close is usually not done, as well as you don't bring such your strategic artillery assets into position where enemy's tanks would be rushing right into your back. Such low angle is indicative of missile, cruise (not ballistic) or air launched. Cruise missile like Russian Kaliber would make bigger bang, so most probably it was an aircraft launched air-to-ground missile.
Edit: downvoting without clear technical counter-arguments - i take it such people just don't like where the technical analysis leads to while not able to provide their own technical analysis :)
Here is the place: https://goo.gl/maps/kPKyJVTkDoFyWZD47
It looks like the south part of the hangar was damaged.
The missile struck pavement ~30m from hangar, the hangar is ~30m high and the roof is damaged to the point about ~30m from the edge. The missile came at low angle, so it could have come through the area there the roof was damaged by the blast (that gives minimum angle for the missile - by the 60m to 30m ratio - of a bit under 30 degree), and the hole over the plane's tail gives the low angle which is also a good candidate.
I don’t know how can you see any patterns or traces on the pavement in this blurry screenshot with resolution probably around 1 pixel per foot.
I can see the damaged hangar, but I for sure can’t see traces on the pavement.