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.