You’ve had the opportunity to fly in both an Mi-26 and a C-130? I’d be curious to know more about your career, I can’t imagine there are many who have spent time in both.
My Mi-26 experience was as a staff tech (military, but as part of a humanitarian effort) airlifting medical trucks into a flood-struck area in India, like, 30 years ago or so, but as I understand it, they're still used pretty widely outside NATO, even today.
Very true. I had the impression that the Mi-26 was considerably more niche, and that there wouldn't be a ton of overlap between operators of the C-130 and the Mi-26. However, I just checked the list of operators on wikipedia (not sure how accurate that is) and Algeria, Jordan, India, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela all field both. There also seems to be civilian operators of the Mi-26.