After a 24hr delay this amazing AN124 finally arrived from RAF Waddington to BAE Woodford carrying Nimrod XV246 for conversion to type MRA4. Many thanks to Ian Worsley for his additional footage and his help in making this video possible.

Antonov 124
The Antonov An-124 Ruslan (NATO reporting name: Condor) is the largest aircraft ever mass produced, and was, until the advent of the Antonov An-225, the largest aircraft in production. It flew for the first time in 1982. Over forty are currently in service in Russia and Ukraine.

Physically, the An-124 is similar to the American Lockheed C-5 Galaxy, but is larger in many dimensions. An-124s have been used to carry locomotives, yachts, aircraft fuselages, and a variety of other oversized cargoes. Up to 150 tonnes of cargo can be carried in a military An-124: it can also carry 88 passengers in an upper deck behind the cockpit.

Germany intends to lease An-124s for NATO strategic airlift requirements as a stopgap until the Airbus A400M is available. Boeing also has used the Russian cargo company Volga-Dnepr to ship oversize aircraft components to their Everett plant with their An-124 fleet. Specifically, the An-124 is the only means of airlifting the General Electric GE90 turbofan engines used in the Boeing 777 airliner. As of 2004, there have been four major crashes of An-124s with a total of 50 fatalities.

Notable Mention
An An-124 was used to transport the Obelisk of Axum back to its native homeland of Ethiopia in April, 2005. The shipment was done in three trips, each carrying a third of the monument's 160 tons and 24-meter (78 ft) length. Modifications were done to the airstrip at Axum in order to accommodate such a large aircraft. A Ukrainian An-124 was featured in the James Bond film Die Another Day, although the interior shots appear to be of an Ilyushin Il-76.


This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Antonov An-124".