Whatever happened to the notion of China building An-225s?
Volga-Dnepr is grounding all their An-124, however there is also Antonov Airlines that enjoys direct design bureau support. So AA might not gorund their planes.Bad news if your in the space industry and have an outsized payload that won’t fit onto a 747 & you don’t have access to a large military transport aircraft.
Whatever happened to the notion of China building An-225s?
There is no irony here. The US isn't interested in China having modern aircraft engines. Russia is not interested in this either, by the way.ironically Ukrainians being blocked from doing this by the US.
It's even worse fro An-225. It was one of a klind plane that required USSR-level of coopeartion to built. Now quite a big chunk of the plants and facilities are either in Russia or Gone (Uzbekistan).Whatever happened to the notion of China building An-225s?
Might be stalled because, despite bearing "Antonov" name. An-225 probably contains considerable amount of Russian parts as An-124.
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78% of AN-124 are made in Russia and so does the production facility. I would guess similar portion goes for the An-225.
If you have the budget, surely building these giants is technically within China's capabilities?
The Chinese are about to introduce the COMAC C919 airliner into service, that's a large aircraft, and I think the airframe and aerodynamics were mainly indigenously developed. There are already a few dozen Y-20s in service already, which is nothing to be sneered at.If you have the budget, surely building these giants is technically within China's capabilities?
China still seems to have issues with larger airframes. The bulk of their domestic production was based on H-6 and Y-8 aircraft, with the Y-20 being a relatively new addition. Even the Y-20 seems to have a lot of design similarities to Il-76s, though it doesn't seem to be quite the aerodynamic copy of the other two designs. While the PRC does produce some of the most modern fighter aircraft, large multi engine designs seem to lag behind the US and Russia, or even Airbus if you consider civilian designs.
Trudeau also said that Canada was seizing a Russian-owned Antonov cargo aircraft that landed in Canada last year and starting the process of forfeiting the aircraft to Ukraine.
production of D-18T in Russia is being mastered with an expected start of deliveries in 2027
There are quite a few in stored reserve status An-124's in Russia, so if you consider their active fleet plus stored reserve, you are probably looking at around 30 airframes.This seems superfluous but i guess it's a backup if PD-35 engine got behind schedule.