Mi-26 Is The World’s Largest Helicopter And It Can Transport Airliners Using It’s Sheer Power

Lo, and behold, check out the world’s largest Helicopter flying in all its grandeur and magnificence in Mother Russia! Moscow-based Mil Helicopters built the Mi-26, and it started its first operations way back in 1977. The mega machine has roughly the same height as a three-story building, with the wingspan large enough to cover an Airbus A320. This monster of a helicopter has been a stalwart in the ultra-heavy lift industry, and a pair of 11,000 horsepower turboshaft engines are used to power it. The Halo, as it is commonly called, is capable of transporting five-men along with 44,000 pounds of cargo, or roughly 11 family cars at once!

Just to put things in perspective, The Halo’s power and payload capacity is twice that of the U.S Army’s much hailed CH-47 Chinook helicopter. A lot of time, Halo is compared with the legendary Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport plane, as according to Avia-Russia, the helicopter’s military versions is capable of carrying as many as 90 combat ready troops, or 63 seated civilians, or even 60 stretchers!

 

In the picture above, a Mi-26 is transporting a retired Tupolev Tu-134 airliner. You wouldn’t see such sights of sheer power and brute strength anywhere in your country, unless its Russia of course.

Halo is sometimes used in more dangerous situations and battlefields as well. It has a range of nearly 500 miles, so the Mi-26 has been employed in the past to carry large payloads to inaccessible or unusual places. For example, after the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, a Mi-26 was used to deliver heavy machinery and earth-movers to the remote mountainous valleys to prevent flooding and mudslides.