[PHOTOS] World's Biggest Airplane Is About To Make Its Rare Landing At KLIA
It has wingspan twice the width of a football field and could carry 10 battle tanks!
By Sadho Ram — 14 May 2016, 03:17 AM
Originally developed in the 1980s for carrying the Soviet space shuttle on its back, it is the longest and heaviest airplane ever built
It is powered by six turbofan engines and its wingspan measures 290 feet (88 metres), basically twice the width of a football field
With a maximum total weight at takeoff of 640 tons, Mriya has 32 wheels spread across its landing gear to help carry all that weight
This monster of a plane has a hunger of a giant. As "Mriya", which means "Dream" in Ukrainian, needs 16 tons of fuel per hour to fly.
This undisputed superstar of the skies the world over is currently taking flight on a rare delivery mission across three continents
The trans-continental flight, which began in the Ukraine, will end at Perth, Australia, with multiple refuelling stops along the way. From its pickup location in Prague, Mriya has already made its scheduled stops in Turkmenistan and India.
The plane, carrying an 117-tonne power generator for a Western Australia resources company, is now headed for Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) in Malaysia.
It is 12,000 iPhones long, around 2,000 lattes high and can carry 2,500,000 cheeseburgers, according to The West Australian.
Just imagine how many plates of nasi lemak it could carry!
Basically, the plane can carry enough food to avert a famine.
The plane will land at KLIA sometime around Saturday morning, but the exact timing cannot be confirmed. You can monitor live air traffic website Flight Radar 24 for the plane's estimated time of arrival.
