- Image by Getty Images via Daylife
There have been a flurry of press comment on the possibility of the Russian military ordering new An124 aircraft to kick start the production of new build aircraft.
The comment mostly seeming to come from UAC President and CEO Alexei Fyodorov as well as the head of the Russian Air Force. For an example see http://www.russiandefenseblog.org/?p=694
However, despite military aircraft and those of Rossiya being seen more frequently these days there is no mention of the maybe 40 aircraft that were in military service at the break up of the Soviet Union and subsequently mothballed. These must surely be more cost effective for the military to put back into service.
Although some of the current commercial An-124 fleet are new build since that time the majority date from that era and began their lives with very early modification states. So there is clearly no technical reason why they could not be upgraded to current standards.
It is also interesting to see Mr Fyodorov referring to the necessity for a military order before the whole program can begin. With a $200 million dollar price tag and a cruising speed some 10% less than conventional aircraft due to the fundamental aerodynamics of a ramp loading airplane it is difficult to see even an upgraded An-124 being competitive in operating economics with competing aircraft.
So we complete the circle and large scale civil aircraft production is again dependent on the military picking up the tab to kick start the program. A typical US approach yet state subsidy as argued by Airbus.
It will be interesting to see what happens.
After a lengthy refit and life extension program in Antonov Design Bureau's facilities in Kiev during the first part of this year the Antonov An-225 has claimed a new world record airlift out of Frankfurt Hahn Airport.
Antonov-225 in new livery. Click to Enlarge
Antonov Airlines’ An-225 'Mriya' is the only example of the heavy-lift freighter, the world’s largest operational aircraft with a maximum gross weight of 640 tonnes (1,411,000 lb) and payload of 250 tonnes.
The aircraft now sports a new livery featuring the blue and yellow national colours of Ukraine.
The world record lift was 16.2m (53ft)-long generator destined for a gas plant in Armenia. Following earlier extremely heavy loads which took rather longer to complete the loading methods and equipment have clearly improved considerably as the aircraft arrived in Hahn on 11 August and departed on the 12th before returning for a second large piece the following day making the carriage of such extraordinary pieces look routine.
The total cargo load totalled 190 tonnes including the loading frame with the generator weighing in 187.6t.
 An-225 World Record Lift |
 An-225 World Record Lift |
 An-225 World Record Lift |
So it seems that even Kieran Daley over at Flight Global has some spare minutes to trawl the web for relevant footage of the air cargo charter business and came up with this Youtube video taken from the flight deck of an Antonov An-124.
The camera wielding freight dog may be a romantic but looks like they are also a little outside their comfort zone in the video editing field.
Mosnews.com today reported that Russia intends to restart production of the An-124-100. It will be interesting to see whether this much talked of event comes to fruition.
The Aviastar-SP factory in Ulyanovsk, in Russia’s Volga region, will again begin making the An-124-100 aircraft, otherwise known as the Ruslan, Lenta.ru reports. It is the world’s largest commercial cargo plane and was the largest plane of any type in production until the An-225 took that title away from it.
The exact date for renewed production has not been announced, but the paperwork is now being done to include the project in the 2010 federal budget.
The move is likely to create more than 2300 new jobs at Aviastar-SP and generate 4 billion rubles ($125.4 million) of income per year for the government.
Only 56 Ruslans were ever made. The first one took to the skies in 1982. In April 2008, Viktor Zubkov, who was then prime minister, stated that production of the plane would be resumed in the third quarter of that year.
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2 x F/A-18 Mirabel to Australia
There was a time, not all that long ago, when moving fighter airplanes like the F/A-18 from one theatre to another or from manufacturer to customer was a major undertaking, especially when long overwater legs were concerned.
Those nations with transport aircraft large enough to accommodate them, (which reduced the list to the USA), were usually pretty hard pressed to make the capacity available especially when considering that the cargo itself had wings.
So the fighter boss had to content himself with either a long, slow trip by boat or the risk and substantial expense of long ferry sectors by his tempremental and very expensive asset.
The arrival of the An-124 in commercial guise after the break-up of the Soviet Union has been a godsend for military logisticians everywhere. The very possibility of western military interventions around the globe over the last 15 years being highly questionable without the availability of these aircraft for charter.
The latest example is the photo story carried on FlightGlobal's Image of the Day of 2 x F/A-18 aircraft being loaded at the L3 MAS facility at Mirabel for delivery to the Royal Australian Air Force by an An-124 of Antonov Airlines.
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Further talks on joint co-operation between Russia and Ukraine relating to the An-124 and An-70 are on the radar after a recent meeting of the Ukrainian-Russian sub-commission on cooperation in the aircraft industry, in preparation for talks between Prime Ministers Tymoshenko and Putin.
There is a distinct impression that Russia rather wishes the An-70 would go away but the subject keeps being raised by Antonov and the Ukrainian Government who have a great deal of time and money invested in the project.
At the same time the Russian company, Volga Dnepr, continues to pester the Russian government for funding to support a restart of production of the successful An-124 product line – which requires cooperation from the Antonov Design Bureau, a Ukrainian state owned enterprise.
Out of such confused politico-industrial situations only more confusion can come. The situation is not made any easier by the dramatic slump in Russian revenues with the collapse of the oil price which will greatly limit Putin's room for manoeuvre.
An-70 prototype
Ukraine seems intent to continue with the An-70 and recently renewed it's commitment to fund a further two aircraft. However, this will do little more than build up the test fleet and these could hardly be considered production aircraft. It is understood that one of the proposals under consideration is for the An-70 to be included in the product line of Russia's United Aircraft Corporation (UAC). This would certainly call for a high degree of co-operation which would become even more tangled up with Ukraine's expressed desire to join NATO.
While both the An-124 and An-70 have proved themselves to be highly capable aircraft which richly deserve further development and funding it is surely more likely that circumstances and timing are against them.
