Antonov An-225 - world’s largest aircraft - RIP?

[zwk500]

I was wondering about that.

I'd also suspect it'll be further away than Poland or any other state the is geographically close to Russia just to avoid the risk of "accidents" with rogue missiles.

Poland is in NATO. Any Russian missile strike on polish territory is almost certain to lead to Article 4 being activated. Cruise missiles don't just wander off course and happen to strike an extremely valuable propaganda target.

 

[popeter45]

i wonder what will be diffrent with this one?, cant see them staying with the old model of engines and some of the control computers
Rolls Royce or GE could get some good PR from providing engines for free?

 

[Airline Man]

I’ve alway’s had a fascination for Soviet and Russian aircraft, although I doubt we’ll see another An-225 fly again. It was a one off.

 

[mpthomson]

I’ve alway’s had a fascination for Soviet and Russian aircraft, although I doubt we’ll see another An-225 fly again. It was a one off.

Indeed, there's absolutely no viable business case for building a new one. It only marginally made money for Antonov when someone else (ie the USSR) had paid all the design and build costs for it.

The reality is that there's nothing that it can move that can't go by 124 or sea if too large. It never moved anything time-critical.

That's before we get to the issue that noone is going to build a new aircraft using six feeble, ancient and inefficient Progress engines (the six on the 225 produced only 50% of the power that the 4 RR engines on an A380 produce and are a nearly 50yr old design), which means a wing and complete avionics redesign. Given that a production line 747F off the shelf cost about $400mn at the turn of the year, a single 'new' 225 would be north of $1bn easily.

Antonov is barely flying anything at the moment, it averages one or two flights a week and there's no way they can afford it. The Ukrainian state will have far more important things to spend that kind of money on post conflict and notably has declined to give any money to Antonov to assist. Wonderful piece of engineering that it was there was never a 'need’ for it post Buran, ie it couldn't do anything that couldn't be done a different way. It was a 'nice to have' because someone else had paid for it to be designed and built.

 

[Meerkat]

That's before we get to the issue that noone is going to build a new aircraft using six feeble, ancient and inefficient Progress engines

But the yanks are replacing the B-52 engines with 8 small ones rather than 4 big ones so it wouldn’t be unprecedented.

 

[jfollows]

But the yanks are replacing the B-52 engines with 8 small ones rather than 4 big ones so it wouldn’t be unprecedented.

I don’t think the B-52 has ever had 4 engines, it’s always had 8. There was apparently a proposal to fit 4xRB-211 which never came to anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress so the usual caveats about provenance and accuracy of course.
EDIT But I take your point.

 

[mpthomson]

But the yanks are replacing the B-52 engines with 8 small ones rather than 4 big ones so it wouldn’t be unprecedented.

B52 has always had 8 engines in 4 pairs of 2, just as it will do after this project, plus the fact that the new engines are much more efficient. The B52 wing needs basically no structural modification to carry it out, plus they have a real purpose, the 225 is lacking that. It isn’t missed on the cargo circuit and no one is clamouring for a new one.

 

[Egg Centric]

I’ve alway’s had a fascination for Soviet and Russian aircraft, although I doubt we’ll see another An-225 fly again. It was a one off.

Where's baby spice?

 

[nlogax]

Indeed, there's absolutely no viable business case for building a new one. It only marginally made money for Antonov when someone else (ie the USSR) had paid all the design and build costs for it.

Despite a lack of business case fundraising and efforts are underway to examine a 'rebirth' of the AN-225 using spare airframe parts and salvaged components from the original plane. Microsoft have contributed to the cause by donating funds to the Antonov Corporation from the virtual AN-225 which can be bought in MSFS 2022. There's another six months of funding to come from that source.

 

[mpthomson]

Despite a lack of business case fundraising and efforts are underway to examine a 'rebirth' of the AN-225 using a spare airframe parts and salvaged components from the original plane. Microsoft have contributed to the cause by donating funds to the Antonov Corporation from the virtual AN-225 which can be bought in MSFS 2022. There's another six months of funding to come from that source.

It won't happen, there's just no need for one and there's nothing salvageable from the original airframe that will be usable or desirable (the engines are ancient, the stiff end of 50yrs old in terms of design). There's less of the second airframe than people think, as well. It's a partial fuselage with no tail, wings, engines or avionics and it was stored outside for some time. Ignore any internet nonsense about it being 60/70% complete, it's nowhere near that. How usable it would actually be remains to be seen. Fundamentally any new 225 would be a ground up build with new engine/wing/avionics design.

The Ukrainian Antonov factory hasn't built anything large and new since Ukraine became independent and 225 was a USSR project with input from across the country rather than a Ukrainian project. It's questionable whether Ukraine has the expertise to build one on its own, given the failures of the all of its platforms built since then. The civ An124s were either conversions of military ones, which wasn't a lot of work, or built in Russia and neither Boeing or Airbus will help as they both have large cargo aircraft available to buy or to hire.

There's a boatload of wishful thinking going on with it. It was a engineering marvel when it flew but we won't see another.

 

[Strathclyder]

I will always bitterly regret not making the effort to go see the original aircraft when she last landed at Prestwick in August 2020. Of course, I didn't know then that would've been my last chance to see her given what what would happen in February 2022, but that doesn't assuage the bitterness even slightly. Nor does the infinitely slim chances of the second airframe ever being finished.

 

[Cloud Strife]

Same here. It turned up in Rzeszów about three months before the war, but it was definitely one of those things that you'd just assume would be flying around for a long time because of it's very specialist role.

The story of her destruction is also quite fascinating. It's now clear that the management of the company deliberately avoided taking her away from Hostomel Airport, but also that the company apparently interfered in Ukrainian attempts to secure the airfield with anti-aircraft defences.