50 years old and still the most impressive, menacing looking plane ever engineered

[diverdownjt]

74. AN-225 taking of at DIA....

Christmas eve in a snow storm. I used to work for Integrated Airline Services.
My wife had the job after I left and was coordinating fueling and deicing and working with
the crew. She couldn't get any of her crew to show up, and I wasn't going to let her do it by herself. I was working for one of the big cargo airlines now and still had security clearance.
She couldn't get any of the contractors to come and deice the plane, so I kept calling for her
while transporting the crew out to the plane 3 at a time(13 total). Each guy had 20+bags of
stuff from Walmart(blue jeans,t-shirts,food stuff). No one would take the Captains Russian credit cards or even American cash. Finally I talked Continental into doing it, so when I got the last crew out I told one of them and he said go tell the Captain. This plane tilts it's nose up to load so when it's down for flight the only way up is an extension ladder tied in place. I get up to the cockpit I tell the Captain that I got a taker on the deal for cash. He looks at me and says "I don't need f-ing deice, thank you now get off my plane". I was like" Capt. please don't do this. Heavy snow coming down horizontally. He said Merry Christmas now get off. Now I think I'm about to witness an aviation disaster, but instead I get a lesson from an experienced Pilot who knows his plane and knows what it can do. This guy no doubt has flown his plane Siberia and what not, so this is just spitting in the wind to him. I get back to the van and we watch as they taxi up to the runway and turn north into the wind and punch it. They get up to speed and we can barely see it now, but he pulls up the nose and tons of snow fall off all at once and the Antinov(largest cargo plane in the world) leaps into the air
and disappears on it's way to Baghdad, via JFK, Spain, Egypt.