The Antonov An-178 ( uk, Антонов Ан-178) is a short-range medium-

airlift An airlift is the organized delivery of supplies or personnel primarily via military transport aircraft. Airlifting consists of two distinct types: strategic and tactical. Typically, strategic airlifting involves moving material long distan ...

military transport aircraft A military transport aircraft, military cargo aircraft or airlifter is a military-owned transport aircraft used to support military operations by airlifting troops and military equipment. Transport aircraft are crucial to maintaining supply ...

Antonov Antonov State Enterprise ( uk, Державне підприємство «Антонов»), formerly the Aeronautical Scientific-Technical Complex named after Antonov (Antonov ASTC) ( uk, Авіаційний науково-технічни� ...

company and based on the

Antonov An-158 The Antonov An-148 ( ua, Антонов Ан-148) is a regional jet designed and built by Antonov of Ukraine. Development of the aircraft was started in the 1990s, and its maiden flight took place on 17 December 2004. The aircraft completed its ...

(An-148-200). It was announced on 5 February 2010, rolled out on 16 April 2015 and the

maiden flight The maiden flight, also known as first flight, of an aircraft is the first occasion on which it leaves the ground under its own power. The same term is also used for the first launch of rockets. The maiden flight of a new aircraft type is alwa ...

was on 7 May 2015. The An-178 is proposed to replace outdated aircraft like the

An-12 The Antonov An-12 ( Russian: Антонов Ан-12; NATO reporting name: Cub) is a four-engined turboprop transport aircraft designed in the Soviet Union. It is the military version of the Antonov An-10 and has many variants. For more than ...

An-26 The Antonov An-26 ( NATO reporting name: Curl) is a twin-engined turboprop civilian and military transport aircraft, designed and produced in the Soviet Union from 1969 to 1986.Gordon, Yefim. Komissarov, Dmitry & Sergey. "Antonov's Turboprop Twin ...

and

An-32 The Antonov An-32 ( NATO reporting name: Cline) is a turboprop twin-engined military transport aircraft. Design and development The An-32 is essentially a re-engined An-26. It is designed to withstand adverse weather conditions better than the ...

. The aircraft will have an avionics suite similar to the An-148, and will use

Progress D-436-148FM The Progress D-436 is a three-shaft high by-pass turbofan engine developed by the Ukrainian company Ivchenko-Progress, and manufactured by Motor Sich in Ukraine. It was initially developed to meet the requirements for late versions of the Y ...

engines. The An-178 is a potential competitor for the Embraer KC-390 from

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The company plans to build more than 200 of the aircraft.

Design and development

An-178 is a

high-wing A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing conf ...

transport aircraft with moderately swept wing,

winglet Wingtip devices are intended to improve the efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft by reducing drag. Although there are several types of wing tip devices which function in different manners, their intended effect is always to reduce an aircraft' ...

s and a

T-tail A T-tail is an empennage configuration in which the tailplane is mounted to the top of the fin. The arrangement looks like the capital letter T, hence the name. The T-tail differs from the standard configuration in which the tailplane i ...

. The

airframe The mechanical structure of an aircraft is known as the airframe. This structure is typically considered to include the fuselage, undercarriage, empennage and wings, and excludes the propulsion system. Airframe design is a field of aero ...

is made of

aluminium Aluminium (aluminum in AmE, American and CanE, Canadian English) is a chemical element with the Symbol (chemistry), symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately o ...

alloys and

composite material A composite material (also called a composition material or shortened to composite, which is the common name) is a material which is produced from two or more constituent materials. These constituent materials have notably dissimilar chemical or ...

s. The

fuselage The fuselage (; from the French ''fuselé'' "spindle-shaped") is an aircraft's main body section. It holds crew, passengers, or cargo. In single-engine aircraft, it will usually contain an engine as well, although in some amphibious aircraft t ...

is semi-

monocoque Monocoque ( ), also called structural skin, is a structural system in which loads are supported by an object's external skin, in a manner similar to an egg shell. The word ''monocoque'' is a French term for "single shell". First used for boats, ...

with a circular cross-section. The retractable

landing gear Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for takeoff or landing. For aircraft it is generally needed for both. It was also formerly called ''alighting gear'' by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Marti ...

consists of two main wheel bogies and a dual nose wheel. The flight control system is dual duplex

fly-by-wire Fly-by-wire (FBW) is a system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface. The movements of flight controls are converted to electronic signals transmitted by wires, and flight control ...

system, consisting of two parts: FCS-A and FCS-B, each of which is responsible for two control channels. The flight control surfaces include

aileron An aileron (French for "little wing" or "fin") is a hinged flight control surface usually forming part of the trailing edge of each wing of a fixed-wing aircraft. Ailerons are used in pairs to control the aircraft in roll (or movement arou ...

s near the

wing tip A wing tip (or wingtip) is the part of the wing that is most distant from the fuselage of a fixed-wing aircraft. Because the wing tip shape influences the size and drag of the wingtip vortices, tip design has produced a diversity of shap ...

s, four control spoilers, six lift-dump/speed-brake spoilers,

rudder A rudder is a primary control surface used to steer a ship, boat, submarine, hovercraft, aircraft, or other vehicle that moves through a fluid medium (generally air or water). On an aircraft the rudder is used primarily to counter adverse yaw a ...

and

elevators An elevator or lift is a cable-assisted, hydraulic cylinder-assisted, or roller-track assisted machine that vertically transports people or freight between floors, levels, or decks of a building, vessel, or other structure. They a ...

, with an emergency mechanical cable back-up system. The powerplant consists of two

turbofan engines, mounted on pylons under the wings and an

auxiliary power unit An auxiliary power unit (APU) is a device on a vehicle that provides energy for functions other than propulsion. They are commonly found on large aircraft and naval ships as well as some large land vehicles. Aircraft APUs generally produce 115&n ...

. It can shift 18 tonnes over 1,000 km, or 10 tonnes over 4,000 km. The aircraft was derived from the 99-seat An-158 regional airliner and was fitted with the commonized F1 fuselage nose section with the identical flight deck, wing panels, empennage and most of the onboard systems. The fuselage however was newly created with an enlarged diameter that had grown from 3.35 m to 3.9 m, which has resulted in an enlarged cargo hold - the cargo cabin cross section increased to 2.75 m by 2.75 m. Aside from the wing structure, outer panels (including winglets), front fuselage nose, cockpit and nose landing gear which come from the

An-158 The Antonov An-148 ( ua, Антонов Ан-148) is a regional jet designed and built by Antonov of Ukraine. Development of the aircraft was started in the 1990s, and its maiden flight took place on 17 December 2004. The aircraft completed its ...

, there is an extra pair of tandem main-wheels on each side. The aircraft made its Western debut at the 2015

Paris Air Show The Paris Air Show (french: Salon international de l'aéronautique et de l'espace de Paris-Le Bourget, Salon du Bourget) is a trade fair and air show held in odd years at Paris–Le Bourget Airport in north Paris, France. Organized by the French ...

. There are reports that future production-standard aircraft will have a longer wingspan while retaining the organic wing panels of the An-158. Its maximal takeoff weight would increase to an estimated 56 tons. Later production variants would need turbofan engines with a thrust of about 9,500 kgf to have the characteristics required. The planned engine may be the new-generation in-development Ivchenko-Progress AI-28 turbofan. The decision was made to fit the An-178 prototype with less powerful D-436-148FM engines in the interim. The D-436-148FM is a derivative of the production-standard D-436-148 with an upgraded fan, which boosted the takeoff thrust to 7,800 kgf and at emergency power rating to 8,580 kgf.

Operators

Orders and letters of intent

;: * Maximus Air -

Letter of intent A letter of intent (LOI or LoI, or Letter of Intent) is a document outlining the understanding between two or more parties which they intend to formalize in a legally binding agreement. The concept is similar to a heads of agreement, term sh ...

;: *

Silk Way Airlines Silk Way Airlines is an Azerbaijani private cargo airline with its head office and flight operations at Heydar Aliyev International Airport in Baku. It operates freight services to Asia, the Middle East and Europe, as well as services for gov ...

- launch customer with a firm order for 10 aircraft placed in May 2015. ;: *

Royal Saudi Air Force The Royal Saudi Air Force ( ar, ‎الْقُوَّاتُ الْجَوِّيَّةُ الْمَلَكِيَّةْ ٱلسُّعُوْدِيَّة, Al-Quwwat Al-Jawiyah Al-Malakiyah as-Su’udiyah) (RSAF) is the Military aviation, aviation branch o ...

- Letter of intent for 30 aircraft, though the planned order was later reported to have been cancelled. ;: *

Iraqi Army The Iraqi Ground Forces ( Arabic: القوات البرية العراقية), or the Iraqi Army ( Arabic: الجيش العراقي), is the ground force component of the Iraqi Armed Forces. It was known as the Royal Iraqi Army up until the co ...

- 2 on order ;: * A-Star - China Beijing technology company placed order for 50 aircraft and proposed to establish joint production in PRC. ;: *

Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine The Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine ( uk, Міністерство внутрішніх справ України, Ministerstvo vnutrishnikh sprav Ukrainy, MVS) is the ministry of the Ukrainian government that oversees the interior af ...

- ordered 13 aircraft *

Ukrainian Air Force The Ukrainian Air Force ( uk, Пові́тряні си́ли Збро́йних сил Украї́ни) is the air force of Ukraine and one of the five branches of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Its headquarters are in the city of Vinnytsia. W ...

- ordered 3 aircraft (AN-178-100P) (The assembly of the first one has started in spring 2021) ;: *

Ministry of the Interior of Peru The Ministry of the Interior of Peru is charged with administrating the interior government of Peru as well managing National Police of Peru. , the minister is César Cervantes. Functions *To plan, formulate, direct, control, and evaluate the poli ...

- ordered 1 aircraft

Specifications

References

External links

* {{Antonov aircraft

An-178 The Antonov An-178 ( uk, Антонов Ан-178) is a short-range medium-airlift military transport aircraft designed by the Ukrainian Antonov company and based on the Antonov An-158 (An-148-200). It was announced on 5 February 2010, rolled out ...