The Mriya

Living in Ukraine made me into an aviation geek and got me into the joy of spending an evening flight spotting on FR24. It’s all thanks to the Mriya, the world largest airplane.

Based northwest of Kyiv, it was fairly easy to spot the Mriya. Seeing it fly was always majestic. The thing is massive.

Over the past two years, the Mriya tirelessly moved medical supplies, and vaccines around the world. It was always fun to follow its movements, see people post pictures on Twitter from around the world and bask in the engineering marvel that the plan was.

Here’s my last picture of the Mriya, taken as it was flying over my neighborhood for a rehearsal of the Independence Day parade last year, notice how the construction workers all stopped to admire it too!

Alas, the Mriya couldn’t be evacuated in time as it was being repaired, and its home base of Hostomel was the site of a massive Russian arial assault.

There’s a sister plane of the Mriya’s that was never built, hopefully she’ll fly some day when this is all over. For now, it’s a darling of YouTube and there are tons of videos and documentaries if you search for “Mriya”.