KYIV: The world’s largest cargo plane, the Ukrainian-made Antonov-225 Mriya, was burnt in a Russian attack on Hostomel airport near Kyiv.
“The Russian occupiers destroyed the flagship of Ukrainian aviation – the legendary An-225 Mriya. It happened at the Antonov airfield in Hostomel near Kyiv,” Ukrainian state arms manufacture Ukroboronprom said on Sunday on its Facebook page. It said that the plane restoration would cost more than $3 billion and take a long time.
Antonov 225 Mriya is a strategic airlift cargo aircraft, designed by the Soviet Union’s Antonov Design Bureau in the 1980s, and is the largest airplane in the world.
Most airliners are powered by two or four jet engines but Mriya on the other hand has six. Its wingspan measures 290 feet (88 meters), which is longer than five 53-foot semi-truck trailers set end-to-end. Its maximum total weight at takeoff is 640 tonnes. Mriya has 32 wheels spread across its oversized landing gear.
The Mriya (NATO reporting name: Cossack) was designed at the end of Cold War and its purpose was to carry the Soviet “Buran” space shuttle and parts of the “Energia” rocket on its back. It operated as the primary method of transporting the Buran-class orbiters from 1988 to 1991.
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
After remaining unused for some years, it was put back in service by Antonov Airlines, a Ukrainian cargo airline, a division of the Antonov aviation company, operating international charter services in the oversized-cargo market with a fleet that included also An-124 Ruslan cargos.
Since then, the An-225 has been used for heavy airlift supporting also international disaster-relief operations transporting huge quantities of emergency supplies as happened during Covid-19 pandemic.
The Antonov An-225 Mriya held multiple records which included being the heaviest aircraft ever built, the largest wingspan of any aircraft in operational service and the largest cargo aircraft in operational service. The fate of the gigantic aircraft had been already under focus in the early stages of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The biggest plane in the world “Mriya” (The Dream) was destroyed by Russian occupants on an airfield near Kyiv. We will rebuild the plane. We will fulfill our dream of a strong, free, and democratic Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/Gy6DN8E1VR
— Ukraine / Україна (@Ukraine) February 27, 2022
