Antonov An-225 Mriya

Mriya means "dream", and the An-225 was built for exactly one: to carry the Soviet Buran space shuttle on its back. Antonov took the already-enormous An-124, stretched it, added two more engines for a total of six, doubled the landing gear to 32 wheels, and replaced the single fin with a twin tail so the shuttle's wake wouldn't hammer it. The result was the heaviest aircraft ever flown, 640 tonnes at maximum weight, and at 84 metres, the longest.

Buran flew only once before the programme was shelved in the early 1990s, and the An-225 went on to a second career as the world's ultimate outsize freighter. When something was too big or too heavy for anything else, 190-tonne generators, wind turbine blades, relief cargo by the hundreds of tonnes, Mriya was the phone call. It held over 200 payload-related world records, and everywhere it landed, crowds came to watch.

Only one An-225 was ever completed. It was destroyed in 2022 while undergoing maintenance. A second airframe, roughly one-third built since the 1990s, still exists, and Antonov has said the type may one day be completed. Its records remain unbeaten.