Large Military Transport AN-124 First Flight.

It is nearly a quarter of a century when An-124 RUSLAN has been on the wing. In the international market RUSLAN still has no rivals with respect to its perfect combination of payload, flight range and cost efficiency and is being proudly regarded the best project of Global Transport Aviation. This is the only Aircraft in the World that is strong enough to carry 150 tons of cargo (modification AN-124-100-150M) with the diameter of up to 6,5 meters. The Aircraft is 21,1m high with the wingspan of 73,3m and flight range over 16 000 kilometers.

The giant freighter was designed by Antonov Design Bureau with series production in Ulyanovsk Aircraft Factory AVIASTAR-SP and Kiev Aviation Factory AVIANT. To date both factories have manufactured 56 aircraft in total with nearly 50% being commercially operated. Volga-Dnepr Airlines is the biggest Russian operator of АN-124s (43% of commercial fleet). In 2006 the Company had 53 percent of the Global super heavy and outsize cargo operations.

At this time Volga-Dnepr ant its Ukrainian counterparts are making significant efforts to resume the series production of such unique capacity aircraft.