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The Story Of Ruslan
 The Ruslan had it maiden flight fifteen years ago, on 26 December 1982. It was conceived as a military airlifter able to carry loads with a weight of 120t over a distance of 5,600km at a cruise speed of 750-800 kmh. A thousand design bureaus, factories and scientific establishments participated in its development and production. In 1987, the An-124 was accepted in service with the Soviet Air Force. The plane holds 30 world's records in cargo capabilities and flight range (such as lifting a 171t load to an altitude of 10,750m and covering 21,200 km in 25.5 hours without a stop-over). With a maximum take-off weight of 405t and full tanks (214t of fuel), it can cover a distance of 16,500km, burning 10 tonnes of kerosene per hour in cruise mode. Having overcome a series of obstacles, the Ruslan has established itself in both the military service and the civil market. In all, 65 airframes have been assembled and production continues. Three more airframes are under assembly at the Aviastar factory in Ulianovsk. Moreover, one airframe is being completed at AVIANT in Kiev. The latter aircraft will be the last one built in the Ukraine. Antonov confesses that there are no customers for these four airplanes as of yet, because under current economic conditions, it is hard for CIS operators to find enough cash to pay for an aircraft all at once. According to Lieutenant General Yuri Klishin, deputy RusAF commander, the Service has "over 20" Ruslans in active service (in 1996, official data reported the figure at 26 airframes). The readiness of the fleet lies between 50 and 60%, being so low due to a lack of cash for major overhauls and repair of engines. "We have enough operable airframes to fulfill our needs," Klishin reported. According to him, operable airplanes log "from 20 to 120 hours" (presumably, a year - the Air Force experiences a shortage of fuel). Together with manufacturers and scientific establishments, the Service prepared a program for gradual upgrade of old-series D-18T engines, aimed at extending their lifetime and time-between-overhauls.
Civil fleetPiotr Balabuev, Antonov general designer, often says that a military airlifter differs from a civilian freighter only in that one is painted green, while the other is multi-colour. However, over 60 changes had been made to the basic design before the Air Register of MAK (Interstate Aviation Committee) issued an airworthiness certificate for the An-124-100 in 1992. It is interesting to note that well before its certification in 1989 (some sources say in 1986), the Ruslan began operations in Aeroflot colours.Currently, 20 An-124-100s are in commercial service in Russia and the Ukraine. Volga-Dnepr has seven airframes, Antonov Airlines five, GTK Rossiya two, Polyet two, Titan three and Ayaks one. According to data from Volga-Dnepr, the civilian Ruslans have logged 45,130 flight hours since their introduction into commercial service, including 34,100 hours with Volga-Dnepr pilots at the controls. From 1995 till October 1997, the logged flight time was 19,480 hours for Volga-Dnepr's airplanes, 8,756 for Antonov Airlines', 2,196 for GTK Rossiya's, 1,504 for Titan's and 1,496 for Ayaks'. In total, it gives 35,965 flight hours. The volume of sales during this period was $410m, divided between the above-listed operators as 57%, 26%, 5%, 5%, 4% and 4% respectively. A large portion of work for Volga-Dnepr comes from the US and Western Europe. In the last three years it has risen over two times. In most cases the cargo carried aboard the An-124-100 are high-tech products like space launchers and satellites, aero-engines, airplanes and their components, power-generation and oil equipment, compact production lines and so on. From time to time An-124s are seen in Russian airports full of Chinese consumer goods. In addition, Volga- Dnepr airplanes fly in the interests of the Defence Ministry amd Ministry for Emergencies.
Market"Part of the uniqueness of the Ruslan is that the plane has created a market for itself," says Victor Tolmachev, chairman of Volga-Dnepr directors council and former designer for the An-124 with Antonov. At first, experts believed that eight airframes would be enough to cover all imaginable needs of the global civil industry. Time has corrected them - the industry has recognised the virtues of the Russian-Ukrainian giant and made the plane a gear in its mechanism.The year 1997, stabilized the market demand for An-124 services. The Ruslans routinely carried satellites, power-generation units, oil equipment etc. - in other words high-tech products requiring several years to be designed and built. "The main result of the year is that we now have a conscious, predictable and stable demand for the Ruslan on the market," says Aleksei Isaikin, Volga-Dnepr general director. The two biggest An-124-100 users - Volga-Dnepr and Antonov Airlines - say that more airframes are needed to fully satisfy demand on the international market. The total demand of the market for conveyance of unique cargo is estimated at $300-400m a year, and is expected to rise by 13% annually. The two operators point out that the An-124 is now considered an important tool in fulfilling such industrial projects like setting up new industrial facilities requiring transportation of bulky equipment from one continent to another. Last year Volga-Dnepr's volume of sales amounted to $170m, some 55% of all sales on the market. As of 26 December, five An-124s out of seven in the Volga-Dnepr inventory were fulfilling foreign orders outside of the CIS. Both Antonov Airlines and Volga-Dnepr work hard, but can not fulfill all the requests they receive. "We plan our activities very carefully, trying to satisfy the most important clients," Isaikin says. Konstantin Lushakov, chief designer with Antonov design bureau, says Antonov Airlines would like to add 10 or even 15 aircraft to its Ruslan fleet, but Antonov leadership instead prefers to invest in the development of the An-70 and An-140 projects. This policy is understandable - jobs for talented aircraft designers are more important than purely commercial activities.
No rivalsForeign aircraft manufacturers are also beginning to recognise the need of high-capacity cargo airplanes. Airbus is considering a freighter version of the projected A3XX, while the Americans are thinking of the MD-17, a civil version of the C-17. Although Boeing has developed freighter versions of the Boeing-747, these - unlike the Ruslan - can not accept bulky cargo. Meantime, there are lots of unusual, "not-standard" loads in the worlds that need to be carried. On 6 December, for instance, a Volga-Dnepr Ruslan delivered 68 wild animals from the Czech Republic to Indonesia, including four giraffes, nine zebra, two crocodiles and two wolves. At first a Lufthansa B-747 was considered for this mission, but then dropped for being unable to provide a comfortable ride for the tall giraffes. In the 4.4-m high Ruslan's cabin they felt better.Although the Ruslan's cabin is usually taken as a standard for perspective designs, there are some indications that an even a more capacious airplane will be needed in the next century. Antonov built such a plane eight years ago. The solo example of the An-225 Mria had covered 80% of its flight-test and certification program until the whole project was terminated with the collapse of the USSR. The second airframe is left unfinished, but can be completed if necessary. From time to time Antonov receives requests for An-225 flights from abroad, but the unfinished certification program prevents commercial usage of the plane. Lushakov says that the Mria can finally get certificated, because large space companies are beginning to recognise the need for a super-capacious vehicle able to deliver spacecraft and launchers from the points of manufacture to cosmodromes.
Upgrade and modernisationAs of today, there are no real pretenders to the Ruslan throne. This is partly due to the large investments required to create a plane noticeably exceeding the An-124's performance. This necessitates the need for improving the existing Ruslan fleet to make it comply with all the latest requirements issued by civil aviation authorities. Fortunately, the airframe and powerplant have proved capable of modernisation, which gives hope that technically, the airplane will remain in service for a long time.Although Volga-Dnepr, being the largest Ruslan user, has recently made commitments to the Il-96Ts and Tu-204C freighter projects, it continues to consider the An-124 as its primary type in the foreseeable future. The operator invests a good part of its income into upgrade programs on its fleet. The most important upgrade is to reduce the noise level sufficiently to meet ICAO Chapter 3 requirements. Volga-Dnepr has already fitted one airplane with additional noise-absorbing sheeting. Thus modified, the plane has proved quiet enough to fly without restrictions in the US and Western Europe. Volga-Dnepr says that installation of the additional sheeting on the company's seven airframes costs $4m. The next step will be outfitting the plane with modern navigation systems in order to meet the requirements for minimal vertical separation over the Atlantic. Volga-Dnepr is now trying to get other Ruslan users to join forces in funding this effort. Under the An-124-100M project Antonov has devised a new avionics suite for the Ruslan. It consists of a modified 3A822-10M radar, modern crew communications systems, oxygen supply and radio-communications equipment items designed for the Il- 96, Tu-204 and An-70. Foreign elements are the TCAS-II collision- avoidance, SAT-906 satellite-communications and LTN-101 laser-inertial navigation systems. Volga-Dnepr expects that the cost of upgrade of its seven airframes up to the An-124-100M standard would require $25-30m.
Catastrophes"Aircraft will continue to go down because of being heavier than air," Oleg Antonov once said. This sad wisdom seems to work. Four Ruslans crashed so far, including two An-124s and two An-124-100s. The first unlucky one was a Ruslan owned by Antonov, lost on 16 October 1992 near Kiev during a test mission. Then, on 15 November 1993, an An-124-100 belonging to the Aviastar factory hit mountains in Iran. The third catastrophe happened on 8 October 1996, when a Ruslan owned by Ayaks airline and flying on behalf of Aeroflot - Russian International Airlines, collided with roofs of residential houses in Italy near the Turin airport.The three crashes above are associated with human errors. The fourth catastrophe took place on 6 December of this year to one of the Russian Air Force airframes, RA82005. It occurred immediately after take-off from the airport of the Irkutsk Aircraft Production Association. Witnesses saw dense smoke from the port engines during the take-off. The plane did not even reach 70m before three of its four engines had failed. With one operable engine, which also had a temporary drop in thrust, the plane hit residential houses near the runway, killing 66 people. The RA82005 was built in 1986. Before the crash it had logged 948 flight hours and made 549 landings. On 1 December this Ruslan transported two Su-27UB fighters from Irkutsk to Vietnam as a part of the contract on delivery of 12 Su-27s. The flight recorders found in the wreckage indicated that the engines failed between the third and eleventh seconds of flight. According to Yuri Klishin, the Air Force will keep its Ruslans grounded until the cause of the Irkutsk tragedy is found. At the same time, the Federal Aviation Service of the Russian Federation (FAS) is not going to issue additional instructions for the An-124-100 users. Aleksandr Neryadko, FAS deputy chief on flight safety, says that the An-124-100 is a certificated civil product with an adequate level of flight safety.
EnginesThe tragedy in Irkutsk brought forth numerous speculation in the Russian mass media about the immaturity of the ZMKB Progress D-18T engines in production at the Motor-SICh factory. "The mass media has terrorised our team. Many employees have received a strong psychological shock," said Fiodor Muravchenko, general designer of the ZMKB Progress.Muravchenko stated that in his experience there was no a single case when two engines failed simultaneously due to a hardware malfunction. Operational statistics on the D-18T shows that this engine is no more faulty than its Western counterparts. Muravchenko says that the last variant of the D-18T - the "third series" - has a relatively long TBO time of 6,000 hours (1,000 or 4,000 hours for older models). Its fuel burn is 7% less than that for previous models. Over 30 third-series engines have been built so far. Eighteen of them have already amassed 3,000 flight hours. Volga-Dnepr now has 12 third-series D-18Ts on its Ruslans. With the help of the new engines the operator hopes to increase the yearly flight time per one airframe from 1,200 to 2,000 hours. Sadly, Muravchenko said, the RusAF cannot afford to purchase new engines. Because of this, ZMKB Progress has prepared documentation on upgrading older D-18Ts to the level of current production engines.
Plans for futureVolga-Dnepr's Isaikin is convinced that all incidents with Ruslans were caused by poor usage of the plane. "The two An-124-100 losses happened to airframes owned by small operators unable to provide adequate handling and maintenance for such a complicated machine," he says.Isaikin believes that the unique airplane demands a professional approach to its usage. When the USSR collapsed, Antonov, ZMKB Progress and AVIANT happened to be in the Ukraine, whereas Aviastar, Stupino and Volga-Dnepr are in Russia. This fact worsens the situation. To increase the Ruslan's reliability and safety, Volga-Dnepr offers to establish a special multi-national centre tasked with conducting development and retrofit programs. The centre would also provide maintenance, technical support, personnel-training and other services for all Ruslan users. Meantime, the Ruslan continue to attract new customers. In November Volga-Dnepr transported five Caterpillar trucks, each weighing 103t, from Chicago to Sakha-Yakutia Republic. Then, on 8 December, the carrier delivered a 120t steam-generator from Dusseldorf to Chile. Later, Ruslans transported bulky oil equipment from Houston to Saudi Arabia. "The Ruslan is the most competitive CIS airplane on the international market today," Isaikin says. His colleague Victor Tolmachev adds that "the An-124 is the best achievement of the Soviet Union in the sphere of high technologies. It is a very advanced design with no equal in the rest of the world. I believe that the aircraft is at the very beginning of its long and productive life."
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