Antonov An-178

Updated: October 2026 – A high-wing aircraft with a T-tail and a rear ramp, nothing unusual so far for a transport. But instead of propellers, two jet engines hang under the wing, and the nose looks familiar from the An-148 regional jet: that is the Antonov An-178. It was meant to replace the generation of old propeller freighters that Antonov has stood for over the decades. How far the program really got, how to recognize the aircraft and why a sighting counts as a true rarity, you can read here.

What is the Antonov An-178?

The An-178 is a twinjet transport for military and cargo use from Antonov in Kyiv. Technically it belongs to the An-148 and An-158 regional jet family: the wing, engine installation and cockpit come from there at their core. What is new is the fuselage. It is much thicker, has no row of passenger windows and ends in an upswept tail with a large cargo ramp.

The idea behind it is easy to explain: Antonov wanted to offer a modern successor to its own classics, the An-12, An-26 and An-32. These propeller freighters still fly in many countries, but they are old, need large crews and a lot of maintenance. The An-178, in contrast, relies on jets, a two-person cockpit and electronic flight controls.

Development started in the late 2000s as a self-funded project and was publicly announced in 2010. On April 16, 2015, the prototype rolled out of the hangar in Kyiv, and on May 7, 2015, it took off for its first flight. The prototype’s registration is UR-EXP – the “UR” stands for Ukraine, as you can read in the article on country prefixes.

Tech: regional jet genes in a cargo fuselage

At 32.23 meters long and with a 30.57-meter wingspan, the An-178 is somewhat shorter than the An-12 and clearly narrower in wingspan. The fuselage has a diameter of around 3.9 meters, compared with about 3.35 meters on the An-158. This results in a cargo hold cross-section of around 2.75 × 2.75 meters – enough for standard containers, pallets and smaller vehicles.

An important difference from the An-12: the cargo hold is pressurized. On the old Cub, only a small area at the front was pressurized, not the actual hold – which set limits when carrying people and sensitive cargo. The An-178, by contrast, can fly at high altitude without the hold turning into a cold chamber.

More key data from Antonov figures and common reference works:

• Payload and range: up to 18 tons over around 1,000 kilometers, with 10 tons depending on the source around 3,700 to 4,000 kilometers.
• Cruise speed: around 825 km/h – a completely different world from turboprop freighters.
• Engines: two Progress D-436-148FM, an uprated version of the An-148 powerplant, built in Ukraine.
• Controls: fly-by-wire with a mechanical cable backup.
• Crew: two pilots. On the An-12, a flight engineer, navigator and radio operator still sat in the cockpit as well.
• Landing gear: expanded by an additional pair of wheels per side compared with the An-158, housed in fairings on the fuselage.

Ukrainian sources also mention configurations for up to around 100 people, for paratroopers or for medical evacuation with stretchers. This clearly aims the An-178 at the same market as the Lockheed C-130 Hercules and the Embraer C-390 Millennium – with the C-390 it even shares the basic concept of a twinjet transport.

The features that are enough to identify it

There are quite a few high-wing aircraft with a rear ramp. You can pin down the An-178 reliably with three observations.

The combination of high wing, two under-wing jets, T-tail, winglets and rear ramp is unique in the Antonov lineup. In the end, as always, the registration confirms the type – how to search for a specific aircraft by it is shown in the article Tracking an aircraft by registration. For prototypes and pre-series aircraft, it is worth a look at the article on test registrations and factory registrations, because such aircraft often carry identifiers that don’t fit the usual scheme.

An-178 or a similar transport?

The finder helps you separate the An-178 from the types it is most likely to be confused with.

Feature	An-178	An-12	C-390 Millennium
Propulsion	2 turbofans	4 turboprops	2 turbofans
Tail	T-tail	conventional	T-tail
Nose	Regional jet nose	Glass nose	Radar nose
Max. payload	18 t	up to 20 t	larger than An-178
Cockpit crew	2	5 to 6	2

The other twinjet high-wing transport from Antonov is the smaller An-72/An-74. Their engines mounted above the wing make telling them apart very easy, though. For a broader overview of transport aircraft, see the guide How to recognize military transports.

Program status: many plans, hardly any production

The story of the An-178 is above all a story of delays. For spotters in particular, it explains why you almost never get to see the type.

First customers and a fast start

Right on the day of the first flight in 2015, the Azerbaijani cargo airline Silk Way announced an order for ten aircraft. At the end of 2015 came a letter of intent from Saudi Arabia for 30 aircraft, and the Chinese company A-Star announced purchase interest including possible production in China. On paper, this looked like a successful start.

The break with Russia

The problem: like many Antonov programs, the An-178 depended on suppliers from Russia. After the break between Ukraine and Russia from 2014, these parts had to be replaced. Antonov switched the aircraft to Ukrainian and Western components; according to German-language reference works, the unit price rose significantly as a result. The export orders from Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia were never delivered.

Peru and the home customers

In 2019, the Peruvian Interior Ministry ordered an An-178 for the national police. In late summer 2020, Antonov announced the finished airframe of this aircraft – for the first time, according to the company at the time, without Russian parts. Funding stalled, however, and in early 2022 payments on the Peruvian side were blocked.

At the same time, Ukraine itself bet on the type. For agencies of the Interior Ministry (civil protection and National Guard), 13 aircraft were agreed in 2019 according to reference works. In December 2020 followed a contract for three military An-178-100R for the Ukrainian armed forces, financed through a loan from a Ukrainian state bank. On December 28, 2021, Antonov presented the first of these military examples, intended for certification testing.

War and standstill

With the large-scale Russian attack in February 2022, everything changed. Antonov’s factory airfield Hostomel near Kyiv was contested right at the start, and it was also where the An-225 was destroyed. After that, there is only little confirmed information about individual An-178 aircraft. According to the German-language Wikipedia, the prototype UR-EXP was ferried from Hostomel to Poland in October 2024.

Year	Event
2010	Public announcement of the project
2015	Rollout in April, first flight on May 7, Silk Way announcement
2019	Orders from Peru and from the Ukrainian Interior Ministry
2020	Airframe for Peru finished, contract for three An-178-100R for the armed forces
2021	Presentation of the first military example on December 28
2022	Large-scale Russian attack, fighting for Hostomel, program largely halted
2024	Prototype UR-EXP ferried to Poland according to a reference work

Where to see the An-178

The honest answer: almost nowhere. There is no operator that flies the An-178 regularly through Europe. Even the cargo airline Antonov Airlines, known with the An-124 at airports such as Leipzig/Halle, does not use the type in charter service.

Realistic chances exist only on ferry, test or special flights – and at aviation trade shows, if an example is exhibited there. Before the war, Antonov regularly appeared at major shows; whether and when the An-178 will be seen there again cannot be predicted. Its Western show appearance came in 2015 at Le Bourget. Before events such as ILA Berlin, the Paris Air Show or the Farnborough Airshow, keep an eye on the exhibitor lists.

For hunting such exotics, tracking services and spotter networks are your most important tool. How to read ADS-B data and what its limits are is explained in the guide to flight tracking with ADS-B. Military aircraft don’t always transmit a publicly visible signal (more on this under Tracking military aircraft online) – so expect that an An-178 may also show up unannounced or stay completely invisible. General strategies for such cases are in the article Spotting rare aircraft.

Perspective: why the An-178 is exciting anyway

For spotters, the An-178 is more than just a rare entry in the logbook. It marks Antonov’s attempt to reinvent itself after decades of Soviet-influenced development: away from Russian suppliers, toward Western avionics and its own engines. Which types come from this tradition is shown in the overview of Soviet airliners.

At the same time, the program shows how hard it is to bring a new military transport to market. Competition is fierce: the C-130J has been established for decades, the C-390 has secured several European customers, and for heavier loads there is the A400M or the Il-76. The An-178 was meant to score with low costs and jet speed, but never really got going because of politics and war.

If you are interested in cargo aircraft in general, the guide How to recognize cargo aircraft is a good introduction to telling freighters and transports apart.

Common mix-ups and how to rule them out

Conclusion

The An-178 is the attempt to bring Antonov’s freighter legacy into the jet age: An-158 technology, a new, pressurized cargo fuselage, 18 tons of payload and only two pilots. Political breaks, canceled export orders and the war have prevented it from becoming a real production run. For you as a spotter, that is exactly what makes the appeal: whoever gets an An-178 in front of the lens has one of the rarest Antonov sightings of all.