Arrived home from Denver Monday night, to Terminal 2. As we taxied up, I saw this monstrously huge aircraft parked nearby. Huh. 3 engines on a side. Never seen that before on a jet like that… Pointed it out to my mother, who came to pick me up.
Got home and googled. Damn, the only 6 engine commercial aircraft I could find was the Antonov AN-225, of which only ONE was built back in the 80’s. Clearly I must be wrong, because why would such a unique beast be parked here of all places?
Sure enough, it was. Was picking up a load of Trane A/C equipment and carrying it to the Middle East.
It shows up in MKE from time to time to pick up refrigeration stuff as well.
Somewhere on the web there’s a site that tracks it’s whereabouts. I think I added that I saw it in Milwaukee a few times, I’m sure they’d be happy if you added that you just saw it.
Nice. I’d love to see it but AFAIK it’s never flown to Australia (even if it did it wouldn’t show up locally, based on this vid (youtube) of an IL-76 using all of the runway here to get airborne).
I’ve seen a few A380’s fly over but that Antonov must be a sight.
I’ve never seen an An-225. But back in 2003, I lived near Newburgh, NY and I drove by Stewart Airfield every day on my way to work. So I saw dozens of C-5 Galaxies. Those things are huge. They’d just open on the nose and drive trucks inside of them.
It’s funny, that plane doesn’t look like it’s going that fast, but according to wiki, Canberra Airport has two runways, one that’s a mile long and one that’s two miles long. If that’s the short one, the plane was going, what, probably a hundred mph when it took off.
Also, IIRC it’s harder for planes to take off in hot weather since the air is less dense.
Back in the late '90s I saw it display at the Paris air show. High-banked maneuvers at low altitude over Le Bourget. Oh yeah, and with the Buran space shuttle on its back. To this day, I cannot explain why I took no photos. Was too awestruck, I guess.
I’m hoping I catch it at IAH one of these days. The slightly smaller -125 model visits occasionally.
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Nice. I’d love to see it but AFAIK it’s never flown to Australia (even if it did it wouldn’t show up locally, based on this vid (youtube) of an IL-76 using all of the runway here to get airborne).
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I’ve seen that video. The dry narration cracks me up every time. “You’re gonna have to go faster than that, Captain.” Hee.
Large aircraft & ships are difficult to judge the speed of because they take so long to cross in front of you. Size & time throws most way off.
If you can get 2 points close to the airplane / ship & time the very front as it goes past & then compare it to one of reasonable size, you will be surprised at how fast they really are going.
The giant aircraft are so heavy that they want a much speed as possible before leaving the ground & want to stay in ground effect as long as possible in case of engine failure. Speed is safety for them more so than a lighter machine in some ways. Also the mass is very much on their mind
Miles & miles to stop a supper tanker? Same applies to that large of airplane and runways over 10,000 feet are not that common where they need to load up at.
Saw it flying into Moffett Federal Airfield in Mountain View, California (Silicon Valley) once about 10 years ago now. Was probably 1000 feet in the air when I saw it while I was out for a walk, couldn’t do much but stand and gawk at the sight of it.
Think it was picking up some sort of rather large military/satellite equipment from Lockheed-Martin next door in Sunnyvale, oddly.
