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Inside Ukraine’s hopes to rebuild the ‘Dream’ Russia destroyed: The world’s largest plane [1]
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Date: 2023-03-03
On Feb. 5, the AN-225 flew back home to Hostomel Airport, just 15 miles southwest of Kyiv. The Kyiv Independent reported that one of its six engines was unfastened for use on another Antonov cargo plane. The engine was reinstalled on Feb. 23, and the Mriya was ready to fly out the next day.
But on Feb. 24, Russian helicopters and paratroops attacked Hostomel intending to seize the airport to use as a bridgehead to fly in troops and equipment for an assault on Kyiv. Ukrainian forces counterattacked. In one of the fiercest battles in the opening days of the invasion, Russian troops eventually captured the airport, but it had been rendered unusable for large aircraft.
And the Mriya became an early casualty of the war. Its large hangar caught fire, and all that remained of the Mriya was a heap of scorched and twisted metal riddled with bullet and shrapnel holes. The Mriya’s destruction was announced on Feb. 27 by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. He tweeted: “Russia may have destroyed our `Mriya’. But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We shall prevail!”
x This was the world’s largest aircraft, AN-225 ‘Mriya’ (‘Dream’ in Ukrainian). Russia may have destroyed our ‘Mriya’. But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We shall prevail! pic.twitter.com/TdnBFlj3N8 — Dmytro Kuleba (@DmytroKuleba) February 27, 2022
In early March, a Russian TV reporter visited the captured airport and filmed in front of the hangar where the damaged Mriya could be seen in the background. She claimed that Ukrainian artillery had hit the hanger, causing the Mriya to catch fire. Ukraine said the Mriya was destroyed by a Russian helicopter strike.
x Russian State TV report from Gostomel Airport in Kyiv. Sadly An-225 completely destroyed. pic.twitter.com/9kN04Gkz91 — Aldin 🇧🇦 (@aldin_aba) March 4, 2022
The Battle of Kyiv ended in early April 2022 when Russian troops withdrew. The AN-225’s long-time chief pilot Dmytro Antonov visited Hostomel on April 1. Inside the hanger housing the Mriya, Antonov placed his hand on the airframe of the badly damaged AN-225 to greet the plane as he used to do before each new flight.
“The sadness is totally indescribable,” said Antonov, who is not related to Soviet aircraft designer Oleg Antonov, who founded the company. “I just realized that exactly two months ago, I flew Mriya on my last business trip. I can’t even imagine such a thing happening.”
Antonov also posted his own video of his visit to the airport. He became quite emotional as he looked through his debris-strewn office to determine what the Russians had looted, viewed the damaged planes of the Antonov cargo fleet on the runway, and finally inspected the wreckage of the Mriya to see what parts might be salvaged for a rebuilding project. (His inspection of the Mriya begins at the 18:00 mark of this video.)
The pilot questioned why Antonov Airlines’ management neglected to redeploy the Mriya and its other cargo planes to airports in Poland and Germany as NATO had suggested in the weeks before the full-scale Russian invasion. In October, the Security Service of Ukraine opened an investigation to determine whether undisclosed Antonov company employees had cooperated with Russia, which led to the destruction of the iconic airplane. The company has denied such allegations. In April, the state-run defense company fired the Antonov company’s chief, Serhiy Bychkov, and a top deputy.
Kyiv Independent war correspondent Illia Ponomarenko visited Hostomel in May and posted this video of the Mriya in its hanger.
x Look at what they did to the world’s biggest cargo aircraft.
Antonov An-225 Mriya memorial hangar at the Hostomel Airfield. pic.twitter.com/nTu2wwKcF4 — Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 (@IAPonomarenko) May 5, 2022
On May 20, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced his intention to build another Mriya plane in memory of pilots who died in the war, particularly those helicopter pilots who gave their lives on resupply missions to the besieged fighters at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported.
"In this case, it's not a matter of money, it's a matter of ambition. We were approached by Ukroboronprom (the state-owned defense conglomerate), the Antonov team. This is a question of the image of our country and all the excellent professional pilots who died in this war," Zelenskyy said. "To build a Mriya for the sake of the memory of heroes is the right state position."
As Zelenskyy’s remarks indicate, the Mriya was Ukraine’s aviation flagship, a source of great national pride for Ukrainians for all the records it set. But the plane was originally designed to be part of the Soviet space program. Its mission was to transport Buran-class spacecraft, the Soviet version of the U.S. space shuttle, on top of its fuselage. NASA used modified Boeing 747 airliners for the same purpose.
The Antonov company, based in Kyiv, designed the new plane as an enlarged version of its workhorse AN-124 cargo plane.
x YouTube Video
The AN-225 was first rolled out of its hangar at Hostomel Airport on Nov. 30, 1988. Project Manager Petro Balabuyev, a Ukrainian, said the new plane would have the Ukrainian name “Mriya” because it was born on Ukrainian soil. He told journalists that the plane represents a dream of the infinity of human thoughts and desires. NATO gave the new Soviet aircraft a code name: Cossack.
When the AN-225 made its maiden flight on Dec. 21, 1988, it was the world’s heaviest aircraft, with an empty weight of 285 metric tons (628,317 pounds), and boasted the largest wingspan—88.4 meters (290 feet)—of any plane in operational service. It stretched to 84 meters, or 275 feet. It was powered by six turbofan engines and had 32 wheels.
The plane flew some test missions for the Soviet space program, as well as commercial test flights as part of a civilian certification process. It also made spectacular appearances—some with the Buran on its back—at international air shows from 1989 to 1992, including two U.S. air shows in Oklahoma City and Seattle in 1990. That prompted Boeing spokesperson, Rich Hodgson, to proclaim: “We make the biggest passenger planes in the world, but we bow to the Antonov AN-225.”
The collapse of the Soviet Union led to the suspension of the Buran shuttle program. The Antonov company, now operating in independent Ukraine, had the AN-225 placed in storage in 1994, with its engines removed, at the Hostomel Airport.
In the late ‘90s, Antonov saw potential in returning the AN-225 to serve as a cargo plane capable of carrying larger payloads than any other aircraft. The engines were re-installed, and the cabin floor and nose ramp were strengthened to carry payloads inside the plane.
The length of its cargo hold was 43.35 meters (142 feet, 3 inches)—longer than the Wright Brothers' first flight in 1903, which covered 120 feet. The AN-225 had a maximum payload of 250 metric tons (545,000 pounds), compared to 132 metric tons (292,400 pounds) for the next largest cargo plane— the Boeing 747-8i.
Following its commercial approval in 2001, the adapted AN-225 made its first commercial flight on Jan. 3, 2002. Its cargo: 216,000 prepared meals for American military personnel based in the Gulf. The MREs were transported on 375 pallets and weighed 187.5 tons. The U.S. and Canadian governments contracted the An-225 to transport military supplies to support coalition forces in the Middle East.
Over its history, the Mriya set 124 world records, Antonov Airlines told the website Simple Flying. Some of these records include the transportation of the heaviest payload ever airlifted, at 253,820 kilograms (559,577 pounds). This took place on Sept. 11, 2001, when the Mriya carried five Ukrainian army tanks on a closed circuit of 1,000 km (620 miles). This was before the plane went into commercial service.
x On September 11, 2001, the crew captained by Oleksandr Halunenko set 214 national and 124 world records in one flight on #AN225. The aircraft lifted 5 tanks with a total weight of 253.820t to the altitude of 10,570 m. The speed of 763km/h was reached on 1000 km closed route pic.twitter.com/qldGUXeZpd — ANTONOV Company 🇺🇦 (@AntonovCompany) September 11, 2019
Looking at that picture, imagine the role Mriya could have played in transporting military equipment to Ukraine had it not been destroyed.
On Aug. 11, 2009, the AN-225 carried the heaviest single cargo item ever sent by air. It was a generator for a gas power plant, and its loading frame weighed 187,600 kgs (413,587 lbs), transported from Frankfurt, Germany, to Erevan, Armenia. And on June 11, 2010, the AN-225 carried the world’s longest piece of air cargo—two 42.1-meter (137 feet, 9.5 inches) test wind turbine blades—from Shijiazhuang, China, to Skrydstrup, Denmark.
On Sept. 27, 2012, the Mriya hosted the highest altitude art exhibition at 10,150 meters (33,301 feet) above sea level. The exhibition included 500 artworks created by 120 Ukrainian artists.
The Mriya was built to fill a niche by carrying heavier loads than other cargo planes. But it was very costly to charter—the minimum cost was $32,000 per flight hour plus the additional fees for airport use, plane time on the ground, etc. Many airports didn’t have runways long enough to accommodate the plane. But when disaster struck, the Mriya was called on to fly in humanitarian aid—to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, to Japan after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and to American Samoa after the tsunami in 2009.
In April 2020, the Mriya began carrying tons of medical supplies—including testing kits, masks, and other personal protective equipment—from China to affected areas to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. That effort continued right up to the Mriya’s final mission in February 2022.
In November, the Antonov company announced that a project to rebuild the Mriya had already begun, with “design work” already in the offing. The company predicted that it would cost at least $502 million to get the Mriya back in the air, saying that the rebuild would take place “immediately after the victory of Ukraine” in the war.
The Ukrainian state defense company Ukroboronprom, which manages Antonov, has said it wanted to make Russia pay for rebuilding the aircraft. Antonov told CNN in an email:
“The process of rebuilding ‘Mriya’ is considered as an international project, with the participation of aviation enterprises of different countries of the world. The possibility of attracting funding from various sources is being considered and proposals from many organizations that are ready to join the project are being reviewed.”
The Acting Director General of Antonov, Yevhen Gavrilov, said the company had about 30% of the components needed to build a new aircraft. Antonov has been trying to determine what components of the old aircraft can be salvaged. There are also components that could be used from a second AN-225 whose construction began in 1989, only to be halted in 1994. It’s at an undisclosed location.
The announcement about rebuilding the plane coincided with the launch of a photo exhibition titled “Ukraine: With Mriya in the Heart” at the Leipzig/Halle Airport in Germany, home to five other Antonov aircraft. The exhibition will be touring other international airports this year.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to Germany Oleksiy Makeiev said:
“The event we are attending today is one of the important components of informing the world community about the destruction that Russian forces are wreaking in Ukraine. Walking through the exhibition … you will see that senseless, destructive force destroying the high achievements of engineering and technical thought, the work of thousands of qualified specialists. ... I personally have flown on almost all “AN” aircraft, starting with the An-2. however, the `Mriya’ remained a dream for me. We hope that it will be restored and we will see this mighty bird in the sky again.”
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