From the land of the matryoshka doll, comes the big plane with the little plane inside.
A Volga-Dnepr Airlines said it transported the fuselage section of a Sukhoi Superjet 100 passenger aircraft from Komsomolsk-na-Amure in Eastern Russia to Novosibirsk in the center of the country using one of its AN-124-100 freighters.
The fuselage was transported to the Siberian Research Institute for tests in order to confirm the service life of the airframe -- 70,000 flight hours -- and to perform an inspection to demonstrate the conformance of the aircraft's structural components in all flight conditions.
The fuselage was loaded using the AN-124-100's special onboard loading equipment. The aircraft was partially disassembled to fit the freighter's cargo hold. The aircraft body, wings and tail will be assembled in Novosibirsk at the Siberian Research Institute's facilities.
Source: American Shipper