The largest airplane in the world
The AN-225 “Mriya” is the largest aircraft in the world, both in size and capacity, in the history of aviation. It was built and put into operation in the late 80s of the last century. The one-of-a-kind airplane has never been involved in passenger deliveries. But if someone wanted to turn the An-225 “Mriya” into a passenger airliner, it could become the biggest passenger airplane in the world, displacing the present giant Airbus A380.
The AN-225 Mriya was designed and built in the USSR at the Kiev Mechanical Plant with one single purpose: it was necessary to create an air transport system for the project of a reusable space ship Buran. The AN-225 had to transport various components of launch vehicle and spacecraft from the place of production and assembly to the launch site. Also there was an important task of the space shuttle delivery to the spaceport in case of its landing at reserve aerodromes.
Besides, it was supposed to use the AN-225 as the first step of the system of the aerial launch of a space ship, what required from the aircraft a load-carrying capacity not less than 250 tones. Thus the An-225 was created as the plane intended for the solution of a narrow range of unique transport tasks.
History
The Soviet shuttle never flew (except for one test automatic flight), the space program, as well as the country that created it, collapsed, and the only one built of the two planned planes today is working as a giant truck with wings. With six engines producing 1,377 kilonewtons of non-forceable thrust, the giant has 32 wheels, a wingspan of 88.4 meters, an overall length of 84 meters and a height of 18.2 meters. To say that it is big is not to say anything. In short, a unique airlifter. What about passenger transportation?
First of all, we need to figure out how many people it can hold. To do that, let’s take the Airbus A380 as a template and assume that the aircraft will be a double-decker in a three-class configuration. Our “template” has a main deck almost 50 meters long and 6.50 meters wide. We also know that it can accommodate five rows of first class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration and 32 rows of economy class seats in a 3-4-3 configuration.
On the upper deck of Airbus A380 there are 16 rows of business class seats in the 2-2-2 configuration. Thus, a total of 519 passengers can be accommodated on board: 331 on the lower deck and 188 on the upper deck.
The An-225 has a 43-meter long and 6.4-meter wide cargo cabin. “Mriya” is lower in height than the Airbus cabin: 4.4 meters versus 4.8 meters, respectively. It turns out that when divided into decks, the height of each will be 2.2 meters for the An-225 and 2.4 meters for the A380. Let us assume that due to a number of unique engineering solutions it was possible to make both floors of the AN-225 comfortable enough in height even for basketball players.
Passengers of An-225.
“The Mriya is shorter than the Airbus, so its two decks will accommodate fewer passengers. Using cabin length as the main factor, we get 6.62 passengers per meter of A380 lower deck length (331 passengers / 50 meters of fuselage length). Applying this figure to the An-225, we get that its 43 meters of lower deck would fit 287 passengers. “Mriya” is not only shorter, but also a little bit narrower, accordingly it will be necessary to remove one seat in each row of economy class. It turns out that the lower deck of the An-225 will accommodate 254 passengers.
On the upper deck of A380 following the same scheme calculate “man-meter” – 3,76. Transfer this figure to the An-225, and you get seats for 163 passengers on the second floor of the Soviet plane. And as Airbus is a little bit narrower at the top (5,8m), this allows us to have two chairs in each row of the economy-class of An-225, so the capacity of the upper deck is 188 passengers. Altogether, the Mriya in our passenger version will hold 475 passengers in three-class configuration – by 44 passengers less comparing to A380.
Flight range
Practical range of An-225 with 200-ton (not maximum) load is 4500 km, and range with empty flight is 15400 km. For comparison, Airbus A380 can fly 14800 km fully loaded with passengers. If to assume that the average weight of the person is around 62 kg, then the AN-225 completely loaded with passengers will carry 29450 kg, and this is even taking into account the interior decoration, luggage, water and meal reserves no more than 1/5 of the total payload. Therefore the range of “Mriya” will be not a little bit, but it will be more than of A380.
Do airlines need the AN-225?
And now the main question: do the airlines need the second giant in passenger traffic? If by all the above-mentioned characteristics the An-225 is practically equal to the Airbus, then its six D-18T engines burn during takeoff mode the budget of a small African country. Therefore it is most expedient to use the AN-225 on the routes close by length to its maximum range, and there are not many of such routes.
Both these and other planes were developed for specific needs, so it is unlikely that we will ever see the passenger An-225.
