Can US engineer build “new” Antonov mega-plane without aviation experience?

The WindRunner is already being described as the largest aircraft in the world—even though it hasn’t been built yet. This ambitious project aims to make the use of larger wind turbines more feasible. But this colossal aircraft isn’t being developed by industry giants like Airbus, Boeing, or Lockheed. Instead, it's the brainchild of a company that has never built an airplane before.

Radia, the firm behind the WindRunner, was founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur and aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom. As an article by the BBC notes, his goal is to dramatically expand the capacity of onshore wind power after a “eureka moment.”

Offshore wind turbines can use blades over 100 meters long, while onshore ones are limited to around 70 meters—mainly because of the difficulty in transporting such enormous components across land to remote sites. This transportation bottleneck hampers the economic potential of land-based wind energy.

Lundstrom realized that solving the transport problem would unlock major gains. The article cites him believing that larger blades could allow onshore turbines to generate more energy at lower cost. “They can double or triple the economically viable land in the US for wind farms,” he explains. If successful, the idea—dubbed “GigaWind”—could help enable the deployment of more than one million massive wind turbines globally by 2050.

Radia, based in Boulder, Colorado, has now raised over $150 million and brought on high-profile advisers to push forward its proposed solution: the WindRunner. The aircraft is set to become the largest heavier-than-air vehicle ever built, designed specifically to transport the enormous blades needed for next-generation turbines. Radia believes the aircraft could revolutionize onshore wind power.

“We are building the world’s largest aircraft and we’re doing that because there’s a gigantic gap in the capability of heavy-lift aircraft,” says Lundstrom. “It amazes me that there is no large cargo aircraft in production or planned to meet this need, except for the Radia WindRunner.”

The main obstacle, he argues, is not the technology behind large turbines, but simply getting the components where they need to go. “It’s the inability to move big things that is basically the barrier that prevents us from super-sizing onshore wind turbines,” Lundstrom says.

Another key challenge: this aircraft must be able to take off and land not only from major airports but also from relatively short, semi-prepared airstrips built near wind farm locations.

Iconic precedent

As the BBC recalls, there is historical precedent for such massive machines. The Antonov An-225 Mriya, a six-engine cargo plane once considered the world’s largest aircraft, was built in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Designed by the Antonov Design Bureau (now Antonov Company, part of Ukraine’s defence industry), it took its first flight on December 21, 1988.

Its landing gear included 32 wheels, 20 of which were steerable—four in the front and 16 in the rear. Originally created to transport the Soviet space shuttle Buran, the An-225 wowed global audiences when it landed at the 1989 Paris Air Show with the shuttle mounted on its back.

Capable of lifting twice the payload of a Boeing 747 freighter, the An-225 spanned the length of a football field and had a maximum take-off weight of 598 tonnes. To get such mass airborne, the aircraft was fitted with six engines, each producing a staggering 51,590 pounds of thrust.

Only one An-225 was ever completed. Its destruction during the early stages of Russia’s 2022 military assault on Ukraine was a devastating loss—not only for Ukraine but for the entire aviation world. With it vanished a key piece of global logistics infrastructure, capable of transporting everything from industrial equipment and wind turbine blades to humanitarian aid.

Is experience key?

Radia, for all its ambition, had one glaring disadvantage: it had never constructed an aircraft before. To overcome this, Lundstrom pulled together an expert team to design the WindRunner’s specifications, which were revealed at the Farnborough International Airshow in 2024. Initially, the team considered building an airship but ultimately settled on a fixed-wing aircraft.

“We looked at all the different possible ways to move big components,” says Lundstrom, “and decided that the best way to go is to a fixed-wing aircraft, designed around aerospace components most of which are already in mass production today.”

The most distinctive feature of the WindRunner is its immense straight wing, necessary for short take-offs and landings on semi-prepared runways.

If it is successfully built, the WindRunner will measure 108 meters in length with an 80-meter wingspan—sized to operate at standard airports.

Its cavernous cargo bay would be roughly six times larger than that of the An-225, designed to accommodate the enormous blades that could reshape the future of onshore wind power.

By Nazrin Sadigova