84 meters long, with a wingspan of 88,4 meters and a train of 32 tires per carriage, powered by 6 engines, it landed yesterday in Perth onAntonov An-225 Mriya, the largest cargo plane in the world. The wing area is 628,50 square meters. Tens of thousands of onlookers were waiting at the Australian international airport to see the giant of the skies touch the ground with its 175 tons (excluding fuel) to unload a 117-ton mega-generator embarked in Prague. The Antonov Airlines wide-body made technical stops in the Middle East and Asia before landing on Australian soil.
The Antonov An-225 usually comes employed for mega cargoes to be delivered around the world, including wagons and railway engines. Every time he flies is an event. For this reason, its announced arrival always attracts the media and the crowd of onlookers both on landing and on take-off. The An-225 Mriya is by far the largest and most powerful cargo aircraft and is the updated version of the Antonov An-124 Ruslan, built for the Buran project and now used for special transport by Antonov Airlines.
The first Ruslan – four-engine turbofan strategic transport with high wing (also to avoid the obstacle of snow) and twin tail – was designed and developed in the Soviet Union in the 5s. It is the largest mass-produced cargo plane, even bulkier than the American Lockheed C-1987 Galaxy equivalent. In May 124, an An-XNUMX Ruslan (named after the protagonist of a poem by Aleksandr Pushkin) established a world record covering the distance of 20.151 km without in-flight refuelling. The flight lasted 25 hours and 30 minutes; take-off weight was 455.000 kg.
The previous record was held by a Boeing B-52H Stratofortress. In April 2005 an An-124 was used for the transport of the obelisk of Axum from Rome to return it to Ethiopia. The expedition was made in three trips to allow the transport of the obelisk weighing 150 tons and 24 meters long. Modifications were made to the Axum airstrip necessary to accommodate such a large aircraft; the first segment of the obelisk departed for Ethiopia on April 18, 2005 from the Pratica di Mare airport.
