Images released by the Ukrainian government on March 4th, showing the remains of the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, the world’s largest commercial airliner, shocked everyone. Destroyed by Russia in the hangar where it was kept at Hostomel airport, it seemed to have come to an end.
Some have proposed, however, that the AN-225 Mryia could be rebuilt. The Antonov Company has launched a fundraising campaign with the intention of raising money to restore the plane, “a symbol of the world’s greatest scientific and technical achievements in modern transport aircraft construction.”
The request was posted on the Antonov Company’s official Facebook account, in the form of an open letter addressed to the International Aviation Community and “all non-indifferent people of the civilized world.”
The posting is a request for financial help to rebuild what was once the world’s largest commercial aircraft. It cites that the Antonov AN-225 Mriya, in its glory days, set 240 world records, not yet surpassed, and provided important cargo transport services for more than 30 years.
“Despite the difficult times, the Antonov team considers it absolutely necessary to prevent the complete irrecoverable loss of the legendary aircraft as one of the symbols of modernity and to initiate the rebirth of the flagship transport aircraft AN-225 Mriya,” the Facebook post reads.
According to the Ukrainians, the cost of repairs to the Antonov-225 could reach $3 billion, since it is an old and, as we already know, huge aircraft: it is 84 meters long, 88m in wingspan and has a cargo capacity of up to 250 tons or 1,500 people.
At a difficult time for Ukraine, there is not enough money to solve this problem. We propose to establish an International Fund for the Revival of the AN-225 Mriya transport aircraft
Antonov Company
“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,” said Andrii Sovenko, a Kyiv-based engineer and aviation expert who has worked for the Antonov Company since 1987, in an interview with CNN.
According to Sovenko, the center section of the fuselage and the nose of the plane, including the cockpit and the crew rest compartments, are destroyed. The plane’s onboard systems and equipment received the most critical damage.
The AN-225 was built in the 1980’s, during Russia’s and USA’s space race, to carry large equipment. Since then, it has been used to provide crises aid, for example to carry medical supplies during the Covid-19 pandemic, or relief supplies after the Haiti earthquake in 2010.
The public request via Facebook provides the necessary information so that those interested in helping can make deposits in any amount and thus put, in the near future, the Antonov AN-225 Mriya back in the air. It would literally be the rebirth of a dream (Mriya in Ukrainian) for a war-torn country.
