Antonov AN-124 Heavy Lift Cargo aircraft

Last weekend (9/19) I spent most of Saturday out at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport (aka Williams) on the other side of town - waiting to take a picture of an Antonov AN-124 'Ruslan' departing - after being parked at the airport for the last week.

The AN-124 was the Soviet equivalent of the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy - and was given the NATO codename of 'Condor' during the Cold War. But unlike Galaxy's that have reached the end of their militarily useful lives (and have ended up on the disposal side of D-M AFB aka the Boneyard), the Ruslan has gone on to a successful life as a heavy-lift cargo aircraft - in the private sector. One of its jobs has been to ferry components of the Atlas EELV from Denver, CO to Cape Canaveral, FL.

I didn't find out about the Ruslan coming into the Phoenix area - until after it had already landed. But some of my fellow aviation photographers did manage to catch it as it was coming in.

Even though the Antonov has visited Phoenix, in the past, it isn't something that is regularly scheduled - so I was determined to get some pictures of it. On the ground - and preferably - when it took off.

[I went to the airport the day after it landed to take pictures of the Antonov on the ground]

The problem was - there wasn't any good information on when it was supposed to take off. A story about the plane being in the Valley had been published in the newspaper on Friday - but that was saying the plane was going to leave Friday night (after dark). But the plane didn't leave then.

So I packed up and went to the airport Saturday morning and joined some of the other photographers who had the same thoughts. Part of the flight crew showed up around lunch time and the word was that the plane was going to leave between 3pm and 4pm. Then at 3:30pm - the flight plan was filed with a departure at 5:30pm.

There was still one unknown that could make or break the pictures - which direction was the plane going to take-off. We had a plan to cover either possibility (the three runways are parallel to each other, so we were less concerned about which one).

Once it started taxiing - it was clear it was going to come back towards us - and then take-off going to the Southeast - so after a couple of quick shots of it taxiing - we jumped in the cars and headed to the South end of the airport. The problem was - the Ruslan taxied faster than we expected, and then didn't hold at the end of the active runway before taking off. So we didn't get to our planned location, and ended up just pulling over on the side of the road and quickly taking pictures.

All of my pictures - both on the ground, a quick taxi shot - and then a series on the actual take-off are in the slideshow (link embedded below).



No one knows if the plane was carrying any cargo. Based on how quickly it was taxiing - I was thinking it wasn't. But then based on how slowly it climbed after take-off - it could have been. Only the flight crew knew for sure.