AN-124-100-150 pays flying visit to ILA

The flying visit of an AN-124-100-150 of Volga Dnepr  to ILA on 28th May demonstrated the truth of the previous post.

The AN-124-100-150 variant that dropped in stayed only for a short time while en-route to it's commercial business in Poland.  However, it was there long enough to support Volga Dnepr's Managing Director, Valery Gabriel, who was making a presentation to the European Air Transport Congress taking place nearby and used the visiting An124 Ruslan to highlight its capability to attendees.

The aircraft on show was partially modified towards the -150 variant with the payload of 150 tons.  Many of the performance improvements have been made on this airframe but not the cockpit management software which is more fundamental to the whole operation of the aircraft.

Although other freighters chase to catch up in gross payload terms the An124 has always been dominant in terms of carrying single, indivisible pieces or combinations of heavy pieces which are beyond both the floor loading limitations of other aircraft and the ability of conventional airport equipment to load and offload them.  In this area the An124 continues to dominate.