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Irish Mirror
Irish Mirror
National
William Dunne

Antonov Shannon Airport: Jaw-dropping clip shows pilots' view as world's largest plane lands in Ireland

This jaw-dropping footage shows the pilots' view as the world's largest plane landed in Ireland on Wednesday.

The six-engine Antonov An-225 Mriya touched down at Shannon Airport, delivering nearly 900,000 medical gowns for the HSE.

A video taken from the cockpit shows the experienced crew on approach to Ireland's longest runway - more than 3km in length.

The six-storey tall plane can be seen cruising towards the mid-west airport - and landing so smoothly it's near impossible to notice the moment it actually touches down.

Watch the stunning video here:

Air traffic controller John Wall described it as one of the coolest thing he has ever seen.

He wrote on Twitter: "I've worked in aviation all my life & this is one of the coolest things I've seen to date.

"This is the view from the cockpit of the #Antonov225 landing at @ShannonAirport today with a nice clip of the crew included."

It's expected it will spend a second night at Shannon before departing Ireland on Friday.

The world's largest jet made a fuelling stop at Shannon Airport. The Antonov An-225 Mriya. 'Mriya' means 'Dream' and the plane was designed and built by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Ukraine and first flew on December 21, 1988. (Sean Curtin)

'Mriya' means 'Dream' and the plane was designed and built by the Antonov Design Bureau in the Ukraine.

It first flew on December 21, 1988.

The giant plane was built to carry the then Soviet Union’s space shuttle between launch and landing sites.

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