The Dreamlifter carries sections of the 787 to Everett for final assembly. Wings, fuselage, all kinds of stuff. But with fewer 787s being built they have used them to carry PPE. My favorite Antonov story is the one that I read about during Boeing mechanic training called the "million dollar hole." Something like this: A mechanic was subbing for an absent coworker one Friday and was laying out holes on the 747 join ring by hand. The join ring has a layup of at least four layers, including skins and support structures. What this mechanic didn't know was that there is a pilot hole outside the airplane that you can't see from the inside. The mechanic drilled a hole in what he thought was the right place from the inside, but it missed the outside hole by enough that it was both too far and too close from the centerline to pick up with any imaginative drilling (can't go bigger due to material edge, and too close to add another hole). The decision was made to replace the skin around noon that day (Friday). The closest replacement skin was in Japan. It's small enough to fit in a custom shipping container, but too big to fit into a normal cargo airplane. So they chartered the Antonov (pre-Dreamlifter) to fly a single piece of aluminum from Japan to Everett, WA. While it was being shipped, the Airplane On Ground (AOG) team removed the defective skin panel. The new panel arrived over the weekend, AOG installed the new panel, and the mechanics came back to work on Monday like nothing happened. And it cost about $1,000,000 for that piece of aluminum to be shipped and replaced. Now whenever I see one of the Antonovs landing at Paine Field (PAE, for those interested) I think "What did that dumbass mechanic fuck up this time?"
By chance were you in Melbourne FL loading helicopters? 6-7 years ago we had a 225 loading a bunch of helicopters...
Antonov's are very cool....drive right thru them, just like a C5. I worked on the flightline at Lockheed, Marietta (place that gave birth to every C5). Last Antonov I saw had that P3 fuselage in it that collided with the Chinese fighter jet. After colliding, it landed on some island and the Chinese tried to keep the plane....we sent a team to the island (like an AOG team).....They cut the wings off that P3, and called in the Antonov! I watched the landing and unloading from my office.....that thing was awsome.
I was on the safety team of a small regional airline in Atlanta in the early 2000's. One very early morning, we had a crew return from an all night duty period in an ATR turboprop. They made a wrong turn when crossing the inboard runway (normally used for takeoffs), and due to taxiway construction, wound up in the grass parallel to the runway, facing opposite the takeoff direction. When you leave a paved surface, you will drop off the Airport Ground Surveillance system, so if the tower or ground controller does not see you, you are off the screen. While the ATR crew was deciding what to do, The tower, (on a separate frequency) cleared an Antonov for Takeoff. Now, the AN-124 is so wide that the outboard engines hang over the edge of a standard 150' wide runway. So there would have definitely been a collision with the ATR, which was out of sight of the Antonov because of the elevation change of the runway in ATL. Thank god, the Russians tell the tower "we need 4 minutes to run up engines before return to motherland" Which highly annoyed the tower controller. In the meantime, the ATR crew off-roads it to the next taxiway and turns off. Of course in the ensuing investigation, we heard the tower tapes and saw the ground surveillance tapes. A very scary incident. That's my Antonov story! Thank god for the 4 minute warm up! Dos Vidania!
It's been sometime since I knew the answer with absolute certainty but I believe that the total production number on that puppy was 1. I am less sure about the 124.
Watched them load a locomotive built by GM diesel here and load it onto an Antonov to bring overseas. Pretty cool to see an 80ton train take to the air in a plane.
Calgary built a huge runway because the Antinov was flying in and out of here, and the normal runway was just a little too short when it was really loaded. That is one impressive aircraft.
Boeing finally put the last nail into the 747 coffin it looks like......sad to see it go https://www.bloombergquint.com/busi...lls-plug-on-the-747-closing-era-of-jumbo-jets Sounds like the 747-8F freighter variant will continue to be produced.
The 747-8i freighter is one of the greatest airplanes ever produced, it’s just a beast that everything else to shame.
747-8i is the passenger version. The 747-8F is the freighter. The 8i has been shelved for years now, with the 8F chugging (slowly) down the line. Two years of demand isn't too bad, opportunities for continuing the line might emerge in that time frame. The redesign really did that bird in; new wings, new engines, new problems. And no market. If the 777X Freighter comes on the market, that will be a big boost as freighter demand is still good, just not at the volume to support the 747-8F production line. But being able to fire a freighter at discrete times in a diverse production line is good business.
Well. Played. I just see them with concrete weights on the wings, maybe a quick look when the random one lumbers down the runway (every two months, apparently).
I've done a lot of work at ATL on our surveillance system there. A few years after it was commissioned and we were still getting data feeds via T1 back to our office, we caught an A340 landing on the taxiway one morning after an overnight flight. Hard to believe that could happen at ATL and that no incursion occurred
I was based out of there for almost 15 years between my previous 2 airlines. I recall it happening twice during those years- that I knew about. (Not counting when the South side taxiway WAS being used as a runway when they were rebuilding the old 9L.) On one occasion, the story I heard was that the only way the crew figured out they had landed on the taxiway was when they started bitching at tower for allowing someone to cross their "runway" during the rollout. Guess it took them a minute to realize the centerline was yellow!
I had to go back and read my post to see what i fucked up. Plus my recollection of events and stuff get blurred. This took place in March and April of 2011 so forgive me. I know the pair of helis were a Bell 412 and a converted Sikorsky S-61. I just called my brother to see if he remembers what Aircraft carried them over.
