Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the world’s largest aircraft—and the only one of its kind—was destroyed.
First flown in December 1988, the An-225 “Mriya”, meaning “dream” in Ukrainian, was built during the Soviet regime by the kyiv-based Antonov company for the purpose of carrying the USSR’s Buran spacecraft, much as the Boeing 747 did in the United States for NASA’s space shuttle.
A second Mriya was also ordered, but intermittent construction following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the aircraft 70% complete in 2009, and it is still unfinished.
aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
The unique Mriya made its world debut at the Paris Air Show in 1989 flying with the Buran orbiter on its back. However, the fall of the USSR meant that Mriya’s time in the Soviet space programme has been short-lived.
The legendary aircraft flew a few missions in the early 1990s, but mostly sat idle in Ukraine before being revived as a commercial freighter in 2001.
The An-225 was Antonov Airlines’ faithful workhorse for the next 21 years, before its abrupt end 19 months ago during the Battle of Hostomel Airport in Ukraine, in which the nation’s pride was destroyed by Russian forces.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
With talks to rebuild the beloved An-225—a feat that Antonov estimated in November that it would cost about $502 million (about 470 million euros, at the current exchange rate)—new photos taken by Ukrainian photographer and journalist Igor Lesiv, of AeroVokzal.net, and shared with Business Insider show their dismantling.
Take a look at what the An-225 looked like before and after the attack on Hostomel.
The colossal An-225 had six Ukrainian-made Ivchenko Progress D-18T engines, two tail fins that rose six stories high, and a gigantic cargo door on the nose.
Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
The Mriya was based on the smaller An-124 Ruslan aircraft, of which Antonov built 55 examples. The decision to create a larger version of the An-124 freighter was to gain time, as the Soviet Union was under pressure for its Busan transporter to be delivered quickly.
This meant that the An-225 had many similarities with the An-124, making it easier to swap parts when necessary.
The nose door complemented the plane’s incredible capacity, which was twice that of the 747.
Ronny Hartmann / AFP) (Photo by RONNY HARTMANN/AFP via Getty Images
According to Antonov, the An-225 had a maximum volume of about 46,000 cubic feet (about 1,303 cubic meters) and could carry about 550,000 pounds of cargo (250,000 kg).
Its massive cargo hold measured some 142 feet long (44.5 m), 21 feet wide (6.4 m), and 14.4 feet high (4.39 m).
The Mriya’s oversized capacity made it particularly suitable for transporting awkwardly sized objects such as wind turbines, 50 cars and even a military tank.
Antonov Company
The nose door allowed objects to be slid into the aircraft, making it easier to load and unload large and oddly shaped cargo.
The Mriya had won more than 100 world records throughout its life, starting with its maiden flight in 1988, when it officially became the world’s largest and heaviest aircraft.
In 2009, the An-225 broke the record for air transport of the heaviest piece of equipment ever transported: a 174-tonne Alstom generator stator, which could only be transported as far as Armenia, a landlocked country.
A total of 32 wheels supported the weight of the gigantic aircraft: 28 on the main landing gear, in seven rows of four, and four under the nose.
ACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images
The several dozen giant tires could support the weight of a fully loaded An-225, which has an incredible maximum takeoff weight of about 1.4 million pounds (0.64 million kilograms).
The Points Guy reported that the aircraft carried spare tires on board during missions.
If you’re trying to imagine the scale of this giant bird, from tail to nose and wingtip to wingtip, it spanned roughly the size of a football field.
Stringer/Reuters
According to Antonov, the overall width of the wingtips was 290 feet (132 m), and its nose-to-tail length was 276 feet (125 m). By comparison, the world’s largest passenger jet, the double-deck Airbus A380, has a wingspan of 261 feet (118 m) and a length of 239 feet (108 m).
A Boeing 737-800 has a wingspan of 112 feet (51 m) and a length of about 130 feet (59 m), just a fraction of the size of the An-225.
Antonov had originally hoped to fly the An-225 into the 2030s, boasting the slogan “no other name carries more weight”, but shortly after the Russian attack photos emerged showing the grim reality.
Vadim Ghirda/AP Photos
“Russia may have destroyed our ‘Mriya’,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba tweeted on February 27, 2022: “But they will never be able to destroy our dream of a strong, free and democratic European state. We will win.”
The first photos show the plane crushed, with its nose slammed into the ground and both wings hanging down.
Vadim Ghirda/AP Photos
On the day of the attack, the once-mighty An-225 quickly became a wasteland of charred metal and broken glass.
Dust and smoke surrounded the plane, and Mriya captain Dmytro Antonov described the scene in Reuters as “indescribable” sadness during his visit to Hostomel in April 2022. The driver is not related to the manufacturer’s founder, Oleg Antonov.
Everything from the wings and tail to the hydraulic system and fuel pumps was destroyed.
Maxym Marusenko/NurPhoto via Getty Images
“I just realized that exactly two months ago I made my last business trip. I flew on Mriya. I would never have imagined that such things would happen,” Antonov told Reuters.
He New York Times The salvage operation began in March 2023, and images from April showed debris removed and the area somewhat cleaned up.
Volodymyr Tarasov / Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images
“In early May, a decision was made to start restoring the concrete hangar and dismantling the roof on Mriya so that it would not collapse,” Mriya pilot Antonov told Aerotime Hub in an interview in June 2022, referring to May of that year.
“Later, when Mriya itself is removed from there, we will start reconstructing the site,” he added.
Now, more than 18 months after the attack, new images capture the progress Ukraine has made since then on the An-225 as it continues to salvage what it can from the plane.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
Igor Lesiv visited Hostomel airport in August to see the condition of the An-225, and says Business Insider which was being “dismantled for storage.”
The twin tail fins, engines, several tires and wings have been removed from the aircraft, leaving only the Mriya’s gigantic frame.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
The An-225 wore the famous Ukrainian blue and yellow colours throughout its service life, and it appears that the livery has survived at least on the rear half of the fuselage.
The front end, however, is still charred from the attack and is covered in black ash.
The cockpit is also gone and the plane is surrounded by scaffolding.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
The flight deck suffered some of the heaviest damage during the attack.
During his tour of the place with ReutersAntonov points to the cockpit and says, “There’s nothing left here.”
Other photos show the wings without engines and some destroyed power plants next to the An-225, among other parts.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
Compared to spring 2022, the scene looked very different, as the mess was slowly being cleaned up. Even the hangar where the plane is located has been repaired and the roof is no longer sagging.
However, Lesiv tells Business Insider that some parts could be saved, especially the engines.
Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
“The D-18T engines have always been reorganized between the AN-225 and the AN-124, so they are now used on the Ruslans,” he explains.
Antonov’s deputy general director Maksym Sanotskyi told the German media Deutsche Welle By April 2023, three of the An-225’s six engines have been repaired, with two having been transferred to the An-124 fleet as spares, something particularly useful for Ukraine in the ongoing war effort.
These photos show a radical change from the spring of 2022, when the An-225’s wings were barely holding up with the burned and broken engines still attached.
Vadim Ghirda/AP Photos, Igor Lesiv/aerovokzal.net
The image above shows the An-225 in April 2022 with the wings and engines still attached.
However, both have disappeared as of August 2023, as workers have removed everything they could from the wreckage in the hopes of one day being able to restore it.
Despite the destruction, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Antonov have said they are committed to rebuilding the legendary Mriya, something the incomplete An-225 could help with.
Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
“People should have hope,” Vladyslav Vlasyk, deputy director and chief engineer of Antonov, told The New York Times In March: “They have to know that this plane is not abandoned. Yes, there is still a lot of work to do, but we are working.”
The comments come a few months after the aircraft manufacturer announced in X (formerly Twitter) that “design work has begun in this direction”, referring to the reconstruction of the An-225.
At the time, Antonov said there were “about 30% of components that can be used for the second sample.” In May last year, Zelensky also expressed his commitment to rebuilding the An-225 using the abandoned Mriya.