An-225 Reports Again for Heavy Duty
After eight years, the world`s largest commercial freighter plane is to make its
comeback at the Paris Air Show.
THE world`s largest commercial freighter aircraft, the 250 tonne capacity
Antonov 225, is on course to reappear at next month`s Paris Air Show and could
begin cargo carrying operations in October.
But as the giant Soviet-built aircraft, designed to carry the Russian space
shuttle, prepares for take-off after eight years on the ground, a smaller
cousin, the Ilyushin 76, is reluctantly set to leave the European air charter
market due to noise regulations.
One British airline able to gauge the effect of these arrivals and departures is
Stansted-based HeavyLift, which also has long experience of the highly
successful Antonov 124, the 120 tonne capacity workhorse that seems to transport
most of the world`s long, high, heavy and valuable air freight.
Graham Pearce is commercial director of HeavyLift, which undertook a management
buyout from new owner Kvaerner last year after the Norwegians bought HeavyLift`s
parent company, Trafalgar House.
`There is a real market out there for an aircraft that can carry a single piece
of cargo that weighs in excess of 200 tonnes,` he says.
`But it will be for a specialist market, with each flight requiring long-term
job planning and engineering.
`It will not be about picking up the phone for a next day charter.` The
six-engine AN225 - one was built while another airframe exists - has the same
fusilage height and width as a standard AN124 but is 11 metres longer.
`We have taken a number of inquiries for pieces of cargo that are just too long
or heavy for the AN124,` said Mr Pearce.
The initial focus of the AN225 will be for cargo carried in its capacious…
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