Tag Archives: Antonov design bureau

Antonov Design Bureau Back at Everett

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Once Russia went to war with Ukraine, the ability of Russian cargo operators to continue their US business went away.  Volga Dnepr had been providing a bunch of service for Boeing operations at Everett bringing in outsize airframe parts.  With them out of the picture, Boeing had to find an alternative.  Antonov Design Bureau designed the AN-124 originally and it has an in house airline, Antonov Airlines.  They seem to have picked up a bunch of work that Volga Dnepr previously had.  Despite the enthusiasm for various people calling them Russians, they are definitely Ukrainian!

They have been in and out of Paine Field pretty frequently over the last few months.  I have got shots of them at different times with the aircraft carrying various messages about cities in Ukraine.  Having got shots at different times, I also started shooting some video.  Here are some of the shots along with a video of one of the departures.

Finally, an Antonov Antonov

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There have been quite a few appearances of Antonov AN124s on this blog.  They all have something in common.  They were operated by Volga Dnepr.  There is another operator that I have not had much success seeing.  That is Antonov Design Bureau.  They never seem to be operating near to me.  That was why I was so pleased when one was scheduled in to Everett.  I was taking a week off work anyway so no reason not to go.

The weather wasn’t great but how many chances would I get for an ADB AN124?  A genuine Antonov Antonov.  Time to go.  They were arriving from the north and it was morning so the only option was Future of Flight which wouldn’t normally be good for a morning flight.  However, with a grotty overcast, sun on the wrong side wasn’t going to be such a problem.

There was a bit of a breeze from our side of the runway so the early approach looked like they were coming straight for us.  They floated down the approach and touchdown of all of those wheels resulted in plenty of smoke.  Then they taxied back to the Boeing ramp (after some confusion with air traffic) and shut down.