The Once and Future Behemoth

Designed and built in Kyiv by the Soviet Antonov Design Bureau, the AN-225 Mriya is arguably the world’s most recognizable and famous strategic airlift cargo aircraft. At least it was until February 2022, when it was destroyed, ostensibly by Russian forces, during the Battle of Antonov Airport—an early skirmish of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian Conflict

In a 27 February press release, Antonov parent company Ukroboronprom declared the AN-225 would be rebuilt. "The restoration is estimated to take over $3-billion and over five years,” Ukroboronprom brass asserted. “Our task is to ensure that these costs are covered by the Russian Federation, which has caused intentional damage to Ukraine's aviation and the air cargo sector."

The Ukrainian government, in a paroxysm of defiance, also averred the great aircraft would fly again, stating fervently that the Mriya—a Ukrainian term meaning dream or inspiration—was not only a great achievement, but a symbol of the Ukrainian people’s invincibility and desire for freedom.

Brave words and wartime chest-thumping notwithstanding, the business of rebuilding a 1980s vintage aircraft comprising innumerable Soviet components for which the requisite tooling and know-how are forty-years-gone is a complex and uncertain one. Even if rebuilding the AN-225 were to prove technically possible, the economic feasibility of such an undertaking remains very much in doubt.

Andrii Sovenko, a former AN-225 pilot and aviation author posits: “It's impossible to talk about the repair or restoration of this aircraft; we can only talk about the construction of another Mriya, using individual components that can be salvaged from the wreckage and combining them with those that were, back in the 1980s, intended for the construction of a second aircraft.”

The second aircraft to which Mr. Sovenko alludes was to have been another AN-225, albeit of a slightly modified configuration, with which the Kremlin intended to airlift the rocket-boosters for its Buran-Class orbiters—Soviet Russia’s stillborn rip-off of America’s Space Shuttle. Construction of the second AN-225 was halted following the breakup of the Soviet Union, however, and subsequent efforts to complete the undertaking have proved fruitless.

On 20 May 2022, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky announced his intentions to complete the second AN-225 for the dual purposes of replacing its destroyed forebear and serving as a tribute to Ukrainian pilots killed during the Russian conflict.

Dmytro Antonov, who served as the AN-225’s captain during the aircraft’s 05 February 2022 final flight reported: “Richard Branson [the English businessman and Virgin Group founder] has recently come to Hostomel [a cargo airport near Kyiv]. He is interested in the opportunity to take part in the restoration of the Mriya. It is for such situations that we need to have a ready-made investment project, so that everyone understands that we are serious about it and they can work with us.”

Captain Antonov maintains the AN-225 project can be organized in six-months to one year, and the Mriya rebuilt in approximately two-years.

FMI: www.antonov.com/en/airlines