It is no exaggeration to say that the Hungarian spotter community was in a frenzy following the weekend’s events in Hungary. It just so happened that on Sunday morning, a Field Flightradar user spotted that a rarely seen military aircraft giant was arriving in Hungary.
Exactly one Antonov-124-100 Russlan-type big iron appeared on the public radars. He didn’t just fly over Hungarian airspace,
but also landed, twice.
If the situation can be escalated, not just anywhere: Páp, at the 47th Base Airfield of the Hungarian Armed Forces, at one of Hungary’s three military airports operated by Hungarians (besides Szolnok and Kecskemét). Pápai is the only active military airport in Western Hungary.
The arrival of the unexpected guest was perhaps best captured by the LHPA Spotter Team, and the photos were also published on social media. This shows that the An-124-100 caught concrete on Pápa twice on Sunday.
What do you need to know about the aircraft giant that landed in Hungary?
The giant plane of the Ukrainian Antonov Airlines is very active, it was on its way from Poland to England a few days ago, but it also made the journey from Tel Aviv to Leipzig. However, he does not visit Hungary very often, although it is not without precedent that he does so. For example, in September 2018, he brought four refurbished Mi-24 combat helicopters, which were then transferred to Szolnok.
Antonov Airlines is a Ukrainian cargo airline. It provides a special service, as it delivers oversized cargo from A to B on the international market. Among other things, it is the market leader in the logistics of aerospace equipment. Its main base was the Hostomel airport near Kiev, but after the Russian attack on the base, the remaining intact planes were transferred to the Leipzig airport. In Hostomel, the legendary and inimitable An-225 Mrija, i.e. the Ukrainian dream, which had no bigger cargo plane in the world, was lost.
However, it was destroyed at the very beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war, so its cousin, the An-124, took its place, which is known as the world’s largest cargo plane currently used for military purposes. It’s hard to say for sure, but Antonov Airlines has two of these types, and they know about twenty examples worldwide.
The An-124-100 Ruszlan took off on December 24, 1982 from the factory airport in the Svyatosin region, it can carry up to 150 tons of cargo. The last aircraft developed under the direction of the epoch-making engineer Oleg K. Antonov. And the fruits of this did not remain: he holds thirty world records on the An-124. One of them was when a cargo weighing 171,219 kilograms (171.2 tons) was lifted to an altitude of 10,750 meters.
The An–124-100 Ruszlan is more than 69 meters long and has a wingspan of more than 73 meters. Its travel speed is 800-850 kilometers per hour and it can cover up to 15 thousand kilometers. To illustrate the differences: the new army transport plane, the KC-390, which recently landed in Kecskemét – which is also not small – is only 35 meters long and can carry 26 tons. The video below perhaps faithfully reflects what a giant it is.
| A milestone in the development of the domestic armed forces: the latest military aircraft of the national defense on Hungarian soil, the KC-390 manufactured in Brazil. |
What was the world’s largest airplane looking for in Hungary?
Of course, it is impossible to know exactly what the An-124-100 Ruszlan delivered to Pápa, but there is a good chance that it has something to do with NATO’s SALIS program. This is a joint strategic air transport solution in which a total of nine member countries participate to jointly lease An-124-100 aircraft to support national, NATO and EU operations and missions. Hungary is among the nine countries, as
- Belgium,
- Czech Republic,
- France,
- Germany,
- Norway,
- Poland,
- Slovakia
- and also Slovenia.
The agreement was signed by the Norwegian Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA), which was last renewed in October 2021. More precisely, in May 2022, since the Russian-Ukrainian war fundamentally affected the performance of Antonov Airlines. In any case, the October 2021 agreement is for five years with NSPA and Antonov Logistics Salis. According to this, in addition to the An-124s, the Ukrainians also provide cargo capacity on other large cargo aircraft (IL-76).
The SALIS program carried out operations in Afghanistan, Pakistan or the territory of the African Union, but it also played a prominent role during the Covid crisis.
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