World’s Heaviest Aircraft is Reborn: Tackles Critical Air Cargo Demand

The world’s largest cargo plane, the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, is back after a two-year stay in maintenance. With six engines (and a whopping 16 pairs of landing gear), the plane can transport around 550,000 pounds of freight. The first delivery was 100 metric tons of supplies.

AN-225 Mriya departed from Paris-Vatry on April 20th, after having set a world record delivering eight million masks to France. The heavyweight champion airlifted over 1,000 cbm of cargo – the largest volume ever transported by air, according to the company that chartered the flight. Over the week, AN-225 has been ferrying critical medical supplies to European governments from China. Supplies were loaded from Tianjin (China) and flown to Paris-Vatry (France) and Leipzig (Germany), with a stop-over in Almaty (Kazakhstan).