Antonov An-225 Mriya An-225-100

Antonov Airlines was founded in 1989 as the heavy-lift arm of the Antonov design bureau and began operating An-124-100s and An-12s in partnership with Britain's Air Foyle, from London Luton Airport. By the late 1990s it was clear that an aircraft larger than the An-124 was needed, and the only An-225, stored since 1994 without engines, was the answer. Converting it was not simple: it had been designed solely to carry space shuttles and now had to become a civil freighter meeting Western requirements; moreover, many of the companies that had worked for Antonov were now in Russia. It was re-engined and, between 2000 and 2001, received a series of modifications costing 20 million dollars. The main one was a reinforced floor that raised the maximum take-off weight from 600 to 640 tonnes. A traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS), improved communication and navigation equipment and noise-reduction features were added. With this rebuild the aircraft was redesignated An-225-100.

The modernised Mriya flew again in Kyiv on 7 May 2001 and in June returned to the Paris Air Show. On 23 May 2001 the Aviation Register of the Interstate Aviation Committee had granted it a type certificate, opening the way to commercial use. That year it took part in the parade for the tenth anniversary of Ukrainian independence.

On 11 September 2001 the An-225-100 flew with five T-72 main battle tanks, a record load of 253.82 tonnes, over a 1,000 km closed circuit at 763.2 km/h. Over its life the aircraft set 240 world records, something unique in aviation.

Its first commercial flight left Stuttgart in January 2002 for Thumrait, Oman, with 216,000 prepared meals for American military personnel in the region: 375 pallets weighing 187.5 tonnes. It was then contracted by the Canadian and US governments to carry military supplies to the Middle East, and from July 2003, alongside the An-124s, it moved more than 800 tonnes of equipment for humanitarian missions in Iraq. In 2004 flying a chimney duct from Billund, Denmark, to Kazakhstan cost more than 2 million Danish kroner, about 266,000 euros; in 2017 the hire cost was around 30,000 dollars per hour.

It became the workhorse of the fleet, carrying 130-tonne generators, wind turbine blades and even diesel locomotives, and an asset to disaster-relief organisations for its ability to move huge quantities of supplies at once. On 16 June 2004 it carried 247 tonnes of oil pipeline equipment from Prague to Tashkent. On 11 August 2009 it loaded at Frankfurt-Hahn the heaviest single item ever sent by air: a generator for a gas power plant in Armenia, 16.23 m long and 4.27 m wide, which with its loading frame came to 187.6 tonnes according to Guinness World Records. In June 2010 it flew two 42.1 m test wind turbine blades from China to Denmark, the longest air cargo on record. In September 2012, during the AviaSvit-XXI show, it hosted an exhibition of 500 works by 120 Ukrainian artists at an altitude of 10,150 m. From 2009 it wore a blue and yellow livery, the colours of the national flag, which made it "Ukraine's winged ambassador to the world" in the words of The New York Times.

In March 2020, after more than a year out of service to install a domestically designed power management and control system, it resumed test flights at Hostomel. It returned just in time for the pandemic: in April 2020 it flew from Tianjin to Warsaw with about 1000 m³ of medical supplies, the largest cargo volume ever carried by an aircraft, and repeated the feat days later in France and in Kyiv.

The flight crew numbered six: two pilots, two navigators and two flight engineers, with rest areas behind the flight deck for long missions. Even fully loaded it could fly non-stop over distances such as New York to Los Angeles.

Its last commercial mission ran from 2 to 5 February 2022: almost 90 tonnes of COVID-19 test kits from Tianjin to Billund, via Bishkek. Back at its base at Antonov Airport in Hostomel, it was undergoing an engine change. On NATO's advice its evacuation to Leipzig was prepared for the morning of 24 February, but that day Russia invaded Ukraine and the airfield was one of its first targets. During the Battle of Antonov Airport the runway was rendered unusable and the aircraft burned in its hangar; on 27 February Ukroboronprom, Antonov's parent company, announced that it had been destroyed. Images from March and April showed the forward fuselage burned out and the right wing broken, held up only by its engines resting on the ground.

In April 2023 Ukrainian prosecutors charged Antonov's former head, Serhii Bychkov, with negligence for failing to order the aircraft flown abroad before the invasion. Salvageable parts of the An-225-100 were removed to be mated to the unfinished second airframe, the An-225 that never flew.