Antonov An-225 Mriya

The Antonov An-225 " Mrija " (Ukrainian Антонов Ан -225 Мрія, dt "dream", NATO reporting name Cossack ) is a sechsstrahliges cargo aircraft and the largest now in use aircraft in the world. It has been so far only once completed and put into operation and has the largest certified take-off mass of all previously built aircraft.

Construction

The An-225 is an enlarged development of the four-engine An-124 Ruslan in order to carry the Soviet space shuttle Buran especially in piggyback procedure. For fuselage and wingspan of the An-124 was extended to around 15 meters.

The center wing and the hull proximal portions of the wings were newly constructed and located on each side of an additional engine.
For the transport of the external load on top of the fuselage, the conventional vertical tail could not be maintained, as it now was in a range turbulent air. Therefore, vertical tail corresponding two were mounted externally to the enlarged tailplane.
In the upper cabin behind the cockpit, which is smaller than the An-124, 70 sleeps.
In a stern ramp as the An-124 was omitted.
Unlike the An-124 the main landing gear has on both sides instead of five seven Zwillingsradsätze, of which the rear four are controllable.
The nose gear has two legs with two wheels.
The tow bar for the movement on the ground is 1.2 tons, the heaviest in the aviation industry and is always carried.

History

Development

Originally 402 three machines had been ordered under the project name. They were designed and built with the Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer Antonov led by the Chief Engineer Petro Balabujew. 1987 six wing panels were prepared and individually flown with an An-22 in the piggyback method to Kiev Aviation Plant in Tashkent. The first of the machinery referred to now An-225 was completed in 1988, while the production of the second specimen was started.

Use 1988-1994

The roll out of the An-225 took place on 30 November 1988, the first flight was launched on 21 December 1988. In March 1989 she presented as part of the flight test 106 weight, distance and altitude world records, including 506.8 tons to for the highest weight in flight. In May 1989, the flight test with the space shuttle Buran began. In June 1989, the machine with the Buran at the Paris Aérosalon was shown for the first time in the West. ( Registration: SSSR - 480 182, from June 1989 SSSR - 82060, from 1992 UR- 82060 ).

The An-225 was till 1994 regularly at the Moscow Air Show and also on the Aero Salon in Singapore as a guest. After setting the Buran program, the An-225 Mrija was mothballed in April 1994 initially.

Use since 2001

As in Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union, many enterprises were privatized, it reactivated the arrival 225th

On 7 May 2001, the second first flight took place in Kiev. In June 2001, she came back to Paris Aérosalon. Since December 2001, after receiving all necessary approvals and appropriate insurance for international air freight service, the aircraft will operate worldwide as transport for special tasks of the Ukrainian Antonov Airlines on charter flights.

From autumn 2008, the An-225 was a changed external color scheme. The red trim was replaced by a blue, making the appearance of the machine was adapted to operated by Antonov Airlines An-124. In August 2009 there was a further change. Since then, a curving blue line runs underneath a likewise curved yellow line along the hull.

From the first flight 1988 to 2012, the aircraft had more than 1,000 takeoffs and landings. With up to then only 5,000 flight hours, it is still far from reaching the intended operating time of 24,000 hours.

The second An-225

The construction of the second machine was sluggish continued and not completed until today. Today, it is stored completely in the Kiev factory. In 1998 there were efforts to complete the unfinished machine for cargo charter company Air Foyle; the costs were estimated by Air Foyle to 160 million U.S. dollars. Even the construction of a third machine was thinking. The plan was to use as a transporter for parts of Delta and Atlas launch vehicles or aircraft sections, because the entire fuselage of a Boeing 737 can be found in the fuselage of the An-225 course.

A second initiative to revive the project, there was the end of September 2006. According to Ukrainian media announced Nikolai Rudkowski, Transport Minister of the country after a visit to the manufacturer's completion of the second machine. This entails the up to 120 million U.S. dollars will be provided from Ukrainian government funds to complete the aircraft by mid-2008. Since 2006, however, there were no further announcements and explanations at the moment. The latest available photos from 2004 show the machine, although in well-preserved, but still very rudimentary state. On August 20, 2008, the machine for a day was pushed into the open.

2012 expressed the general manager of Antonov Airlines that it will probably never come to the assembly of the second aircraft due to the sharp drop in bookings due to the global financial crisis. Thus, the An-225 was used in the 2011 and 2012 more than once or twice a month and had for example from Mai to October 2012, not a single flight operation.

Development

An enlarged and improved version with eight engines and the name of An- 325 was planned, but was not realized.

Records

The An-225 holds the following records for the heaviest air cargo transported on an airplane:

Oil pipeline equipment with a weight of 247 t on a flight from Prague to Tashkent on 16 June 2004.
Heaviest single piece of cargo. It is a 190 -ton generator for a gas power plant, which was transported on 11 August 2009 with the An-225 from Frankfurt Hahn Airport to Armenia. This flight also received an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records.