Tucked away in a small section of a Soviet era air base on the outskirts of Kiev is the flagship aircraft of the legendary Antonov design bureau. A one-off masterpiece of engineering designed and built during the 1980s in the waning days of the USSR.

The aircraft, designated the An-225, is the biggest to ever grace the Earth. It’s so large that the length of its cargo hold is longer than the Wright brothers’ first flight, from take-off to landing.

Now 30 years old, and recently upgraded to give it another 20 years’ service, the plane rarely takes to the skies anymore. Instead, it sits stagnant under an enormous steel arch. However, a crew of dedicated Antonov employees still periodically tend to the An-225. Its sporadic use has nothing to do with its age. It’s grounded because there is simply little demand for its highly specialised and relatively costly service. Although the plane, nicknamed ‘Mriya’ (‘Dream’) in Ukrainian, is in fine condition, there are very few jobs that call for something so large . And the jobs need to be urgent; if you want to use the An-225 it will cost around $30,000 (£23,220) an hour.

In 2016, it spent just three months traversing the globe on two lengthy deployments. The remainder of the time, it sat here at the Gostomel airport, once a top-secret flight testing airfield for Antonov.