Antonov An-225 Carries 150 Ton Load Into China

Antonov's AN-225 freighter aircraft, the largest commercial freighter in the world was last week unloading in Shijiazhuang, northern China

The aircraft was chartered by freight forwarder, Panalpina, to carry two laser welding machines with a combined weight of about 150 metric tons bound for Tangshan City, Hebei Province.

Antonov An-225 loading operations

The heavy lift cargo was loaded in Hamburg and discharged in Shijiazhuang on 10th April.  The cargo was urgently required but was beyond the capacity of conventional Boeing freighters and ocean transport would have taken too long.

Panalpina is a regular user of Antonov's smaller An-124 aircraft so the Antonov An-225 was known to the forwarder’s charter and emergency department who promptly secured the AN-225 for the breakbulk cargo.

The An-225, operated by Ruslan International of which the owner, Antonov Design Bureau, is a partner, is the largest commercially used transport plane in the world. It is powered by six Lotarev D-18 engines. The plane has a wingspan of 88.4 meters and a cargo hold of 1,220 cubic meters.

Loading the machines required a purpose-built ramp and a 160-ton crane and took many hours. The aircraft stopped in Minsk and Novosibirsk before reaching Shijiazhuang in the Northern Chinese province of Hebei on April 10.

Following the charter, the People's Daily newspaper reported that Shijiazhuang City airport and Antonov were considering using the airport as a cargo transfer hub for distribution of cargoes throughout northern China.  This is prompted by the increased saturation of the nearby Beijing international airport.

Outsized and very heavy cargoes destined for China could be carried by Antonov An-225 into Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province before being transported to other places in China an airport representative remarked.