Maximus Air Cargo

An Antonov An-124 is one of the rarest heavy freighters in the world – and one of the few still flying today belongs to an airline from Abu Dhabi. Maximus Air Cargo has specialized in exactly the contracts where ordinary cargo airlines fail: outsize industrial goods, helicopters, dangerous goods, animals, relief supplies and military material. Here you learn where the airline comes from, which aircraft it uses, what links it to Etihad and how to get its Ruslan or one of its Il-76s in front of your lens.

Maximus Air Cargo at a glance

Maximus Air Cargo is a charter cargo airline headquartered in Abu Dhabi and based at Abu Dhabi Airport. Its roots lie in the cargo department of Abu Dhabi Royal Flight, the flight service of the ruling family. How Abu Dhabi organizes its state flights today is covered under Presidential Flight Abu Dhabi. Maximus has flown as an independent cargo airline since 2005. The airline itself says it is the largest pure cargo airline in the Emirates.

The business model has little in common with what you know from Etihad Airways or large cargo networks. Maximus flies no fixed routes. A customer – an industrial company, a logistics provider, a relief organization or an army – books the aircraft, and it takes off for wherever the cargo is needed. According to the airline, the focus areas are:

• outsize cargo, such as machinery, turbines or helicopters
• dangerous goods
• live animals, including horses
• VIP cargo and urgent special contracts
• humanitarian relief flights

How such contracts differ from scheduled flights is explained in the article Charter flights vs. scheduled flights.

Codes and callsign

• ICAO code MXU: It appears in the flight plan and on flight trackers. Some reference works list different codes – when in doubt, rely on the tracker.
• Callsign CARGO MAX: This is how the crew identifies itself on the radio.
• IATA code: Practically irrelevant for the charter airline, since there is no ticket sales and no flights on the departure boards.

So you will look for Maximus in vain on the departure board in Abu Dhabi. If you want to catch an aircraft, you work with trackers and registrations. The guide Tracking an aircraft by registration shows how to follow an individual aircraft.

The fleet: one Ruslan and two Ilyushins

Maximus’s own fleet is small but spectacular. According to the airline’s website, it consists of one Antonov An-124-100 and two Ilyushin Il-76TDs. Older industry reports, by contrast, listed only one Il-76. So you can safely assume one Ruslan and at least one Il-76.

Type	Status	Payload according to Maximus	Spotter note
An-124-100 Ruslan	active, one aircraft (UR-ZYD)	up to 120 t	Four D-18T engines, hinged-up nose
Il-76TD	active, one to two aircraft	up to 46 t	T-tail, glazed navigator station
A300-600F/RF	historic, grounded in 2013	–	Once on a wet lease for Etihad
Lockheed Hercules	historic	–	Four-engine turboprop, still mentioned in 2014

For larger standard loads, Maximus also arranges chartered aircraft such as the A300-600, A330 or Boeing 747. These are not part of its own fleet, however, and do not carry the Maximus code.

The An-124-100: the airline’s centerpiece

The Ruslan is the reason spotters have Maximus on their radar at all. According to the airline, its cargo hold offers about 850 cubic meters of volume at 36.5 meters long, 6.4 meters wide and 4.4 meters high. The maximum payload is 120 tonnes, and the maximum takeoff weight is 392 tonnes. The nose and rear doors are each 6.4 by 4.4 meters.

The most important detail for customers is in the roof: cranes and winches run on a rail under the ceiling and lift loads from the airport apron into the fuselage without ground equipment. That allows the Ruslan to land at sites that have no main-deck loaders. Up to twelve accompanying people fly along on the upper deck.

The Maximus aircraft with the registration UR-ZYD is registered in Ukraine. That is not a contradiction: for large Soviet-designed freighters, registration in the country of manufacture is not unusual, for example because of certification and technical support by the manufacturer Antonov. What lies behind prefixes like UR-, RA- or A6- is explained in the article on country prefixes on aircraft.

The Il-76TD: the versatile mid-weight

The Il-76TD is the civilian cargo version of the Soviet military transport. According to Maximus, it carries up to 46 tonnes in a hold of about 185 cubic meters. It also has an overhead crane on board and, according to the airline, can also serve smaller, poorly equipped airfields. For relief missions in crisis areas, that is often more important than maximum payload.

History: from Royal Flight to specialist freighter

Maximus began as the cargo department of Abu Dhabi Royal Flight and became an independent airline in the mid-2000s. The company itself cites 540 flight hours in 2005 – a modest start. By 2011 the total had grown to 11,000, and by 2014 to 15,000 flight hours. At the Middle East Supply Chain & Transport Awards, Maximus was named cargo airline of the year several times, according to the airline in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012, among others.

The A300 years with Etihad

At the end of the 2000s, Maximus tried to gain a foothold in conventional freight service alongside its specialty business. From June 2009, the airline flew two Airbus A300-600RFs on a wet lease for Etihad: Maximus provided aircraft and crew, and Etihad marketed the capacity. How this model works is explained in the article Wet lease explained. The contract was later extended until August 2012.

In 2011, Maximus expected further A300-600s converted to freighters and at the same time publicly toyed with Boeing 747-400Fs. Nothing came of it: in 2013, Maximus grounded its entire A300 freighter fleet, terminated contracts and reoriented itself. Since then, the airline has gone all in again on what it does best – special cargo with Antonov and Ilyushin.

Military and special transports

A large part of Maximus’s business has to do with the state and the military. In February 2017, the airline received a contract from the UAE Ministry of Defense worth about 1.79 billion dirhams, or just under 490 million US dollars, at the IDEX defense exhibition. It covered the acquisition of cargo aircraft that also fly commercially after delivery. Which and how many aircraft were meant was not made public.

Typical special contracts look like this:

• Helicopter relocations for the United Nations – in 2023, a charter broker arranged two Maximus flights to rotate UN helicopters.
• Medical equipment to remote regions – also in 2023, Maximus, together with the charter broker Chapman Freeborn, brought an MRI scanner to Addu Atoll in the Maldives.
• Industrial charters to Asia – on September 2, 2026, the Maximus Ruslan landed with about 46 tonnes of cargo from Abu Dhabi as the first An-124 ever at the new Navi Mumbai airport.

Why military freighters and civilian Ruslans often look the same to laypeople is explained in the article Spotting military transports.

Looking ahead: WindRunner

In November 2025, Maximus signed a letter of intent with the US company Radia. Radia is developing the WindRunner, an extremely large cargo aircraft for wind turbine blades. The aircraft is not yet in commercial service. For spotters, the letter of intent is above all a sign that Maximus intends to stay in the heavy-lift business for the long term.

Maximus and the other Ruslan operators

Since 2022, the market for An-124 charters has changed drastically. The Russian Volga-Dnepr Airlines, once the largest Ruslan operator, is no longer allowed to serve Europe and North America. Several of its aircraft have been grounded in the West ever since. In the Western market, the Ruslans of Antonov Airlines therefore fly most of the work. Maximus, with its single aircraft, is among the few other civilian operators.

You should not confuse the Maximus Ruslan with the even larger An-225 Mriya: that six-engine one-off belonged to Antonov and was destroyed in 2022.

How to recognize Maximus aircraft

The clearest feature is the aircraft itself. The An-124 is a high-wing aircraft with slightly drooping wings, four large engines, a single vertical stabilizer and a low-set horizontal stabilizer. Twenty-four wheels roll under the fuselage. Next to it, the Il-76 looks almost slim: it is smaller, has a T-tail and a glazed station for the navigator under the cockpit.

Since liveries on charter Ruslans can change, the registration is your most important anchor. For Maximus, it is UR-ZYD. The guide Spotting cargo aircraft compares the types of heavy freighters.

Spotting Maximus: Abu Dhabi and on the road

Your best chances are at the home base in Abu Dhabi. Between contracts, the aircraft sit on the ground there, and arrivals and departures are more frequent than anywhere else. If you are in the region anyway, a look at Dubai is also worthwhile: you can find information about the locations in the guide Plane spotting in Dubai and on the page about the cargo airport Dubai World Central.

Outside the Emirates, every Maximus landing is a special event. The Ruslan flies wherever the cargo is – to Asia, Africa or occasionally Europe. Such visits come at short notice and word spreads quickly. The guide Spotting rare aircraft gives tips on how to learn about rare visitors in time. How special your sighting is gets put in context by the article Judging the rarity of a sighting.

Common mix-ups

• Assuming every UR- Ruslan is Antonov – UR-ZYD flies for Maximus out of Abu Dhabi.
• Assuming Maximus is part of Etihad – the A300Fs flew only on behalf of Etihad, and the airlines are independent.
• Counting chartered A330s or 747s as the Maximus fleet – they belong to other operators.
• Mistaking the Il-76 for a small Ruslan – the T-tail and the size reveal the difference.

Conclusion

Maximus Air Cargo is small but operates in an exclusive niche. With one An-124 Ruslan and one to two Il-76TDs, the Abu Dhabi airline flies freight that hardly anyone else can move – for industry, relief organizations and the military. The excursions into scheduled cargo service with the A300F for Etihad are history. For spotters, what remains is above all the Ruslan UR-ZYD: one of the few civilian An-124s outside Russia and a real highlight for any collection.