Russia to restart production of world's largest cargo aircraft

The Aviastar-SP factory in Ulyanovsk, in Russia’s Volga region, will again begin making the An-124-100 aircraft, otherwise known as the Ruslan, Lenta.ru reports. It is the world’s largest commercial cargo plane and was the largest plane of any type in production until the An-225 took that title away from it.

The exact date for renewed production has not been announced, but the paperwork is now being done to include the project in the 2010 federal budget.

The move is likely to create more than 2300 new jobs at Aviastar-SP and generate 4 billion rubles ($125.4 million) of income per year for the government.

Only 56 Ruslans were ever made. The first one took to the skies in 1982. In April 2008, Viktor Zubkov, who was then prime minister, stated that production of the plane would be resumed in the third quarter of that year.