Operators

Antonov Design Bureau was the first operator of the An124 in commercial, international use in 1989 when it operated under the flag of Aeroflot. Wishing to operate independently, Antonov teamed up with a British airline, Air Foyle, as their marketing agent and rapidly found a way of leasing their aircraft to Air Foyle in order to take advantage of the greater operating freedom this entailed. The commercial operation later became known as Antonov Airlines. The cooperation with Air Foyle was to last nearly 15 years until the formation of Ruslan International.

Volga Dnepr, the first joint stock airline company in Russia, was formed in August 1990,and began operating in late 1992 after creating a joint venture with the British airline, Heavylift Cargo Airlines, which was to last some 10 years.

Early aircraft had been military specification aircraft and cooperation between Antonov and Volga Dnepr led to the development and certification of the An124-100 civil variant.

Through the 1990s a number of other organisations operated An124 aircraft under various companies. However, only Polet was sufficiently robust to develop as a serious operator leaving these 3 as the main commercial operators.

Maximus, based in the United Arab Emirates, came into being with one An124-100 aircraft in 2005 and Libyan Arab Air Cargo, the cargo arm of Libyan Airlines also operates two aircraft.

Ruslan International is a commercial cooperation between Antonov Airlines and Volga Dnepr based in a joint office at London Stansted Airport.

Russian Air Force. A small number of military airframes have been modernised to the An124-100 civil standard in order to undertake commercial work, an unusual feature of the Russian economy. In most countries the military would be precluded from undertaking work that can be done by commercial operators. This was, for a long time, a bone of contention between the military and the Russian civil operators.

You can see the fleet list here.