Another Giant Project Air Freight Shipment for Heavy Lift Specialists

UK – RUSSIA – UKRAINE – KUWAIT – SINGAPORE – Always worth a mention, if only for the scale of the shipments involved, Ruslan International, the Essex based company which manages and markets the combined Antonov An-124 fleets of its shareholders Antonov Airlines and Volga Dnepr Airlines, has completed yet another heavy lift project freight assignment with the carriage of a giant power station rotor from Kuwait to Singapore, using one of the seventeen giant Antonov An-124 aircraft under its management.

Loading and unloading the giant rotor, weighing in at a formidable 99 tonnes on its custom-designed cradle, and measuring just short of fourteen metres long, required the use of mobile cranes and the aircraft’s own portable ramp system, the latter adding a further 7 tonnes to the total load uplifted.

As can be seen from the photograph a width of 3.61 metres and an even greater height at 3.83 metres made it a tricky proposition to manoeuvre the giant rotor on, and off, the aircraft, registration UR82008 and the first of Antonov’s An-124 aircraft to be repainted in the new blue and yellow livery already seen on its even bigger brother, the gigantic and truly unique An-225 aircraft. All other Antonov-owned An-124 aircraft in the fleet will be repainted with the new colours as they undergo maintenance.