Over the past few days I have been seeing quite a few Anatov 124’s going from Charslton, SC to Liege vis Bangor. This is an awful lot of lift capacity. What gives?
Military airlift of some kind. I’ve seen them at CHS many times.
I was in CHS for the last couple of months, and saw the Antonov about a dozen times. There are several military contractors in the CHS area building buffed up armored vehicles for use in the Middle East.
I was thinking that the “heavy lift” for the Antonov ( and the 747’s and one or two C-5’s I saw, not to mention the streams of C-17’s) were probably vehicles.
You would be spot on. AN-124’s are contracted as the primary heavy movers for the Canadian military and are used to supplement Air Lift Command in the U.S.
They are moving MRAP’s to Southwest Asia to free up the C-17’s. Here is a link to an article from the Charleston newspaper last weekend.
charleston.net/news/2008/jan … jets26735/
Robert
CHS
Here’s a link to a USAF site showing military air traffic personnel with the Antonov 124’s in Balad, Iraq.
balad.afnews.af.mil/photos/i … 505&page=7
I’ve tried to see one of these in Bangor - biggest aircraft in the world prior to the Airbus 380 - but they always seem to arrive in the middle of the night. Today one was diverted from Bangor back to Boston for some reason.
Listening to Boston ground ATC’s, sounds like a big deal - lots of questions from pilots.
The AN-225 is still the biggest aircraft in the world.