The day war broke out, one of Ukraine’s most decorated pilots stepped onto the balcony of his three-story home to watch a battle raging at a nearby airport. From where he was standing, the pilot, Oleksandr Halunenko, could see the explosions and feel the shudders. The Russians were attacking his country, and he was worried about something close to his heart.
Mriya. The plane.
In a hangar a few miles away rested the world’s largest airplane, so special that only one was ever built. Its name is Mriya, pronounced Mer-EE-ah, which in Ukrainian means The Dream. With its six jet engines, twin tail fins and a wingspan nearly as long as a football field, Mriya hauled gargantuan amounts of cargo across the world, mesmerizing crowds wherever it landed. It was an airplane celebrity, aviation enthusiasts say, and widely beloved. It was also a cherished symbol of Ukraine.
Halunenko was Mriya’s first pilot and loved it like a child. He has turned his home into a Mriya shrine — pictures and paintings and models of the aircraft hang in every room.
But that morning, he had a terrible feeling.
“I saw so many bombs and so much smoke,” he said. “I knew Mriya could not survive.” The war in Ukraine, not even 2 months old, has already destroyed so much: thousands of lives, entire families, happiness and security for countless people.
But it has also destroyed material things that mean a lot — homes burned to the ground; supermarkets that fed communities smashed by shelling; toys and prized possessions scorched beyond recognition.
In the case of Mriya, which took a direct hit during the pivotal battle at that airport, the damage to the aircraft has stirred an incredible outpouring of what can only be described as grief. Heartbroken airplane buffs around the world are getting Mriya tattoos. A sad cartoon has been circulating, with tears streaming out of Mriya’s eyes.
But there may be no one as broken up as Halunenko, who comes from a generation in which emotions are not so easily shared.
“If I were not a man,” he said, “I would cry.”
Halunenko, 76, was a child of the Cold War. His father was a Russian army captain, his mother a Ukrainian peasant. Both died when he was young.
At boarding school in southeastern Ukraine, he took flying lessons and discovered he had a gift. He became a MiG-21 fighter pilot and then an elite Soviet test pilot. He captained all kinds of aircraft, from sleek new fighter planes to powerful freighters but nothing as grand as what he would soon fly.
In the 1980s, the Soviet leadership was eager to get back into the space race. Engineers designed a reusable spacecraft called the Buran that looked like the US space shuttle.
But the components were spread all around — the shuttle was constructed in Moscow, the rockets were made hundreds of miles away, and the launchpad was in Kazakhstan. The only feasible way to get everything in the same place was to fly the shuttle and the rockets on the back of a plane, a really big one.
And so, at the Antonov aviation company production plant in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, Mriya was born. It made its first flight in 1988, Halunenko at the controls.
At 276 feet long and six stories high, the plane, designated AN-225, was bigger than any other in the sky. It boasted 32 landing wheels and a wingspan of 290 feet. Its maximum takeoff weight stood at a staggering 1.4 million pounds, far more than a fully loaded 747. Its nose cone flipped up so that big objects, like turbine blades or even smaller jets, could be slid into its cavernous belly.
There are different ways to measure size, but experts said Mriya was longer and heavier than other giant aircraft.
“The AN-225 absolutely was the largest airplane ever built, of any type, for any use,” said Shea Oakley, an aviation historian in New Jersey. “People came out to see this airplane wherever it flew just to marvel at the size of the thing.”
Mriya wasn’t easy to fly, especially with a space shuttle strapped to its back. It turned in wide arcs — Halunenko held his arms straight out like wings and rocked side to side. On the ground it was hard to dock.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the shuttle programme went down with it. Mriya was repurposed into a gigantic flying workhorse. It hauled generators, vast pieces of glass, stupendous quantities of medical supplies and even battle tanks.
And the Ukrainians kept tinkering with it. In 2001, Halunenko broke more aviation records, including for the heaviest cargo load (253.8 tonnes) ever lifted in the air. The plane also holds the world record for transporting the longest piece of air cargo — a 138-foot turbine blade — and hosting the highest altitude art exhibition. - The New York Times
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