I used to see that sucker at Houston Intercontinental Airport frequently. It was used to fly oil field equipment around the globe. Image Unavailable, Please Login
Which is the aircraft in the photo #2 above. There is only one An-225, but there are a number of An-124s operating worldwide.
You should see the engine run-up that thing does before taking off...I worked it on arrival at YYZ a few years ago, it was so big our radar thought it was two planes about to crash into each other (which triggered a bunch of alarms). Truly amazing machine to see.
In the 90’s, I had a client ship oilfield stuff to China. It was unreal watching it take off. Somebody knew how to engineer lift. Sent from my iPhone using FerrariChat.com mobile app
maybe the heaviest airplane, but not the largest. https://www.flyingmag.com/worlds-largest-airplane-takes-flight-for-the-first-time-in-eight-months/ Note the payload is very similar to the An-225, but gross wt for ROC is 100kips less.
A pilot friend of mine who flew heavy jets for Continental commented to me once that the Antonov required almost every foot of the North-South IAH 12,001 foot runway to get off the ground.
Driving up to Sacramento from time to time I'd see 4 or 5 C5s in the pattern doing go arounds for currency on weekends from time to time. Seeing that many at once in the sky was like a very slow moving big Merry Go Round.
I don't buy that argument. Just because the Stratolauncher has a larger wingspan doesn't make it the world's largest airplane. When you take ALL the dimensions into account, including length, height, empty weight and payload, the An-225 is the largest, and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future. And I really doubt the Stratolauncher can really lift 500,000 lbs.
I was on the bike trail on the beach right at the end of LAX runway when it took off several years ago, the pressure wave almost knocked me over, took me a few minutes to figure out what it was (I'm a GA pilot for last 25+ years so I know planes pretty well), it was one of the coolest experiences to see the underside of it like that so low and watch it fly off over the ocean climbing at a very slow rate, prob a few hundred feet a minute would be my guess.
