The Biggest Planes in the World

“Biggest” is a slippery word for an airplane. Do you mean the heaviest, the longest, the widest from wingtip to wingtip, or the one with the most seats? Each measure crowns a different giant, and the heaviest of them all was destroyed in 2022. This guide sorts them out, with every figure taken from the maker, NASA or a national museum.

What is the biggest plane in the world?

There are three honest answers. By weight, the biggest airplane ever built was the Antonov An-225 Mriya, a six-engined transport with a maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes. By wingspan, the largest aircraft flying today is Stratolaunch’s Roc, a twin-fuselage carrier aircraft whose wings span 385 feet. By passengers, the biggest airliner is the Airbus A380, the only full-length double-decker, approved for up to 853 seats.

What happened to the An-225?

Mriya, Ukrainian for dream, was built to carry the Soviet Buran space shuttle on its back. It first flew in December 1988 from Antonov’s factory airfield near Kyiv, and on May 13, 1989, it lifted off from Baikonur with the roughly 60-tonne Buran riding piggyback. Its wings spanned 88.4 meters, it was 84 meters long, and six turbofans hauled it into the air.

Nothing else could carry what it carried. In 2001 it airlifted a record payload of about 254 tonnes, and in 2010 it set another record by flying two wind-turbine blades, each 42.1 meters long. Two An-225s were built, but only one was ever completed; the second airframe was never finished.

The only completed Mriya was destroyed at its home base in February 2022, on the fourth day of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum noted Ukraine’s pledge to rebuild it and restore its title as the world’s largest aircraft. As of October 2026, Antonov’s own history page still records one completed aircraft and gives no date for finishing the second.

What is the biggest plane in the world after the An-225 was destroyed?

That depends, again, on the tape measure. By wingspan it is the Stratolaunch Roc, which the company describes as the world’s largest fixed-wing aircraft by wingspan: 385 feet from tip to tip, with six engines taken from Boeing 747s and a takeoff weight of 1.3 million pounds. That is still less than the An-225’s 640 tonnes, which works out to about 1.41 million pounds, so the weight title has not passed to anyone.

The Smithsonian points to another Ukrainian design, the four-engined An-124, as the aircraft that has stepped in as one of the largest in service. Among airliners, the A380 keeps its crown. Among military aircraft, Lockheed Martin calls the C-5 Galaxy the largest aircraft in the US Air Force inventory.

Is the A380 bigger than the 747?

Yes, on the measures that matter most to passengers. The A380’s wings span 79.8 meters, about 262 feet, against 212 feet for the 747-400, and its upper deck runs the full length of the fuselage. It is approved for up to 853 passengers in an all-economy layout, while Boeing’s 747-8 Intercontinental was built for the 400- to 500-seat market.

Length is closer. The 747-8 is 250 feet 2 inches long, 18 feet 4 inches more than the 747-400 Freighter it replaced. Boeing’s new 777-9 has now nudged past it at 251 feet 9 inches, though its first delivery is not planned until 2027. The original 747 of 1969, 225 feet long with a tail as tall as a six-story building, needed a brand-new factory at Everett, Washington, which became the world’s largest building by volume.

Why did Airbus stop making the A380?

Too few airlines wanted one. The A380 first flew on April 27, 2005, and Singapore Airlines put it into service on October 25, 2007. Airbus delivered 251 of them to 14 customers, and together they have carried more than 300 million passengers on more than 800,000 flights. But Emirates alone took 123, about half the total, and new orders dried up.

In February 2019 Airbus announced that, with no substantial backlog, it had no basis to keep the line open, and the final A380 was handed over to Emirates on December 16, 2021. Twin-engine widebodies could now fly the same long routes with far lower costs. The last 747, a freighter, followed on January 31, 2023, closing a 54-year run of 1,574 airplanes. Why two engines beat four is explained in how jet engines work.

What is the biggest cargo plane in the world?

With the An-225 gone, the An-124 is the biggest outsize freighter in regular service, and the Smithsonian describes it as one of the largest aircraft in the world. The most unusual is Airbus’s BelugaXL, an A330 fitted with a bulbous upper fuselage to ferry wings and fuselage sections between Airbus factories. It is 63.1 meters long, carries a 51-tonne payload and can swallow two 30-meter A350 wings at once. Six are in service, each painted with a smiling whale face chosen by Airbus employees.

The 747 earned its place here too. Freighter versions hinge the entire nose upward so that long loads slide straight in, and the 747-8 Freighter, which first flew on February 8, 2010, added 16 percent more cargo volume than its predecessor. The very last 747 built was a freighter.

What is the biggest military plane in the world?

For the United States, it is the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy’s big brother in the airlift fleet, the C-5 itself. It first flew on June 30, 1968, and 131 were built: 81 C-5As between 1968 and 1975 and 50 C-5Bs between 1985 and 1989. Fully loaded, a C-5 weighs more than 800,000 pounds, and it can carry two 78-ton M1A1 main battle tanks across an ocean. The modernized C-5M Super Galaxy keeps the fleet flying today.

The An-124, which began as a Soviet military airlifter, and the An-225 were both products of the same Antonov design bureau in Kyiv. Giants like these exist for cargo that fits nothing else: helicopters, satellites, power-station parts and, in Mriya’s case, a space shuttle.

Which aircraft has the largest wingspan of all time?

As of October 2026, the Stratolaunch Roc holds the title among aircraft that fly, at 385 feet. The An-225’s 290-foot span was the largest ever to enter regular service. The A380 spans 262 feet, and the 777-9 spans 235 feet 5 inches in flight, folding its wingtips after landing to 212 feet 9 inches so that it fits the same gates as the older 777.

One famous giant belongs in this list even without a tape measure. Howard Hughes’s H-4 Hercules flying boat, nicknamed the Spruce Goose by a press that annoyed him, was conceived as a wartime transatlantic transport and flew only once, on November 2, 1947. The Smithsonian describes it as nearly six times bigger than any aircraft of its time, and Hughes kept it in flight-ready condition until his death in 1976.

Why do the biggest airplanes need such enormous wings? Because lift grows with wing area, and a 640-tonne airplane needs a lot of it. The arithmetic is in how planes fly.

What to watch for on your next flight

• An A380 gives itself away from any angle: look for a row of windows running the full length of the upper deck, not just a short hump behind the cockpit.
• A 747 has the hump, and its four engines hang well forward of the wing. Freighters show a faint seam around the nose where it hinges open.
• At Toulouse, Hamburg or Airbus’s other factory airports, watch for the BelugaXL and its painted smile, usually arriving with a wing or a fuselage section inside.
• From 2027, if you see a 777-9 at the gate, watch its wingtips: they fold up after landing and straighten before takeoff.

Size is one way to tell the giants apart; the smaller jets take more practice. The spotter’s guide to the two families you will meet most often is Boeing vs Airbus.