Restoring a giant plane: Ukrainian resilience or folly?

The gigantic twin tail fins, once stretching as high as a six-story building, are gone. So are the tailplane, flaps, hydraulic systems, fuel pumps and three of six engines of the plane, which was destroyed in fighting in the first days of the war. Piece by piece, workers are now dismantling the wreckage of the gigantic Mriya cargo plane, the heaviest airplane ever flown, with plans to build a new one with salvaged parts. The restoration of the plane, whose name in Ukrainian means The Dream, has begun. With the war still raging, the immense job of rebuilding Ukraine, where hundreds of thousands of homes, hospitals, schools and bridges are blown up, still seems a distant prospect. Measured against those daunting challenges, the work on the new plane is hardly a top priority from a humanitarian point of view. But it is meant in part as an inspiration, according to executives at the aircraft company that owns it, Antonov. If something as gargantuan and complex as this airplane can be restored, they say, so can the rest of the country. “People should have hope,” said Vladyslav Valsyk, deputy director and chief engineer of Antonov, a state-owned company. “They have to know this plane is not abandoned. Yes, there is a lot of work to do, but we are working.” But critics say that devoting money and energy to rebuilding the plane would be a misplaced priority. Valery Romanenko, an aviation analyst, has said to Ukrainian media that Antonov should focus only on “doing something urgent for the armed forces” during the war, such as making drones. “There are just no words,” he said of the plan to build a new Mriya.<br/>