For thirty-three years, the Antonov AN-225 Mriya was the largest aircraft ever built. Six engines, a 290-foot wingspan, and a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes — numbers that boggled the imagination every time the Ukrainian giant appeared in the sky. Aviation enthusiasts tracked its movements like a rare bird. Airports shut down to accommodate it. Crowds gathered on perimeter fences wherever it landed. On February 27, 2022 — three days into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the Mriya was destroyed in its hangar at Hostomel Airport, northwest of Kyiv. Russian forces seized the airfield in an airborne assault. Ukrainian forces counterattacked. Somewhere in the crossfire, the world’s largest aircraft burned.

Born to Carry a Space Shuttle

The AN-225 was built for one purpose: to carry the Buran space shuttle on its back. The Soviet Union needed an aircraft that could transport the 100-tonne orbiter from its manufacturing plant in Moscow to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan — a distance of 2,100 kilometres across Central Asian steppe where no road could bear the weight.

Antonov’s design team in Kyiv, led by chief designer Viktor Tolmachev, started with the existing AN-124 Ruslan — already the world’s largest production cargo aircraft — and scaled it up. They added two engines (six total), stretched the fuselage, widened the wingspan, and reinforced the structure to support external loads on the dorsal mount. The result was something the world had never seen. The Mriya dwarfed everything at every airport it visited. Its nose could open like a giant mouth to swallow oversized cargo. Its six engines produced 309,000 pounds of thrust — enough to lift a fully loaded Boeing 747 and have thrust to spare.

The World’s Cargo Carrier

After the Soviet Union collapsed and the Buran programme was cancelled, the Mriya sat idle for nearly a decade. In 2001, Antonov Airlines returned it to service as a commercial cargo carrier — the only aircraft in the world capable of carrying certain oversized loads. It hauled power plant generators, wind turbine components, military vehicles, and emergency humanitarian supplies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Mriya made headlines flying massive loads of medical equipment from China to Europe. Each flight was an event. Aviation spotters would travel hundreds of miles for a glimpse.

Three Days of War

Hostomel Airport, also known as Antonov Airport, was the Mriya’s home base. On February 24, 2022, Russian airborne forces launched a helicopter-borne assault on the airfield in one of the opening moves of the invasion. The goal was to seize the airport as a staging base for a rapid advance on Kyiv. Ukrainian forces counterattacked fiercely. The airport changed hands multiple times over three days of intense fighting. The Mriya, unable to be evacuated in time, sat in its hangar through the battle. By February 27, satellite imagery confirmed the worst: the hangar was destroyed, and the aircraft with it. The images of the burned-out wreckage — the unmistakable twin tail fins poking through collapsed roof panels — became one of the defining images of the war’s opening days.

A Dream Reborn?

Antonov has announced plans to build a second AN-225 using components that were manufactured for a second airframe (designated AN-225-2) but never assembled. The project has attracted international interest and pledges of financial support. Whether it will actually be completed — in the middle of a war that has devastated Ukraine’s industrial base — remains uncertain. The name “Mriya” means “Dream” in Ukrainian. For thirty-three years, it was a dream that flew. Its destruction was not just the loss of an aircraft. It was the loss of something that made people look up.

Sources: Antonov Company, Aviation Week, BBC News, Ukrinform