At 1440 PST VDA4571 checked in with Moffett Tower and was cleared to land on Runway 32R. 10 years ago, this would have never happened and if it did, it surely would have been the end of our way of life here in the Bay Area.

VDA4571 is the call sign of an Antonov AN-124-100 operated by the Volga-Dnepar Group, the largest air cargo carrier in the world. And the AN-124 is one of the largest cargo aircraft in the world, comparable to the USAF C-5 Galaxy, but capable of carrying 25% more payload.

And this behemoth of an aircraft was landing on a former US Navy Military base….simply unthinkable a few years back. But thanks to global walls falling, this wonderful aircraft can be chartered to carry your largest payload.

The AN-124 is 226 ft long, 240 ft wide, and 68 ft high and is operated by a crew of 6.

And this particular plane came from Tolmachevo Airport in Seiberia, Russia and flew 12 hours 20 minutes over the North Pole to get to sunny California!

The Antonov has 24 wheels! And they are huge!…notice the man just to the right of the wheels in the picture below.

To load the 330,000 lbs of cargo, the nose swings upward allowing specially crafted cargo containers to be enveloped by the Antonov.

The kind crew gave me a brief tour of this unique visitor. As you can see below, looking from the rear of the plane forwards, it’s got a lot of room! And since AAA can’t quite come over and fix a flat tire, they carry a few spares on board.

Above the cargo hold is where all the passengers/crew spend their time. And that deck is split into two by the wing root, into a forward and aft compartment. We climbed the rear ladder to the aft deck and thats where the galley was located.

Just forward of that is the ‘office’ where 19 crew members can relax and do work.

We then went back down the ladder toward the nose of the aircraft and climbed up another long ladder to the forward compartment where they had the crew quarters and cockpit.

Here is one of the crew rest areas. As you can see it’s not fancy, but it will do on those 12 hr flights to Moffett!

Here is the Navigation, Communications, and Flight Engineers all sit.

I didn’t quite understand which was which, but man, there sure are a lot of buttons!

And here is the cockpit. With the aircraft only being flown for 22 years, it is not quite the latest in technology, but it sure does get the job done.

And then it was back down the ladder to the cargo hold.  One thing I didn’t notice earlier where the two cranes mounted on the ceiling of the cargo area. Each of these two cranes can hold 5 tonnes. And in the picture below, they are moving the AN-124′s tow bar. When you’re that big, you need a BIG tow bar!

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 3rd, 2009 at 9:23 pm and is filed under Adventures, Aviation, Base Visits, Life, Moffett Field, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.