An-124 Panel Falls on Takeoff at Nagoya; Crew Flies On to Clark

An Antonov Airlines An-124 shed a panel onto Nagoya's only runway on Tuesday 10 November, closing Chubu Centrair International Airport for roughly 50 minutes while inspection teams checked the surface. The crew never came back. They pressed on to the Philippines and landed safely at Clark International Airport four hours and 50 minutes later.

The freighter, registered UR-82007, was operating flight ADB357F to Clark at Angeles. According to The Aviation Herald, the An-124-100 was climbing out of runway 36 when the part separated and fell onto the runway. Planespotters records describe the item as a panel. No official explanation for the separation had emerged at the time of writing.

What does a 50-minute closure cost a single-runway airport?

More than it would at almost any large hub. Centrair sits on an artificial island in Ise Bay, about 35 kilometres south of central Nagoya, and operates one 3,500-metre runway. When that strip closes, every departure and arrival stops. Fifty minutes of inspection meant the airport had no capacity at all.

That vulnerability is exactly why a replacement is coming. Japan's transport ministry approved a second-runway project in February 2025. The new 3,290-metre strip is due to enter service by 31 March 2028, and once it opens, flights can continue while crews repair the existing runway. Until then, even a short inspection leaves Nagoya with no usable alternative.

Is this part of a pattern?

It is the second Antonov Airlines An-124 incident at Nagoya in under three weeks. On 22 October, witnesses saw flames at the rear of sister aircraft UR-82029 as it landed from Fairbanks, Alaska. That event closed the runway for 15 minutes, and Interfax reported no injuries. Nothing suggests a link between the two events, which involved different airframes.

Antonov Airlines flies the An-124 for outsized cargo that conventional freighters cannot carry, and it has served Nagoya before — including the delivery of a power plant rotor from Atlanta. The wider Nagoya region is a hub for Japanese aerospace and heavy industry, so outsized freighters are a familiar sight at Centrair.

What do we know about UR-82007?

Planespotters puts the aircraft at almost 41 years old. Antonov built it at Gostomel, near Kyiv, and it joined Aeroflot as CCCP-82007 in 1987. British operator Air Foyle leased the freighter for part of 1992; it then returned to Aeroflot before Antonov Airlines took it over in 1993.

The airframe carries a wartime story too. It took off on a commercial flight about an hour before Russia's invasion began on 24 February 2022 — timing that kept it clear of the fighting. It later received "Be brave like Mykolaiv" titles.

Its recent record includes quieter stretches and rougher moments. It spent five months in storage at Leipzig before returning to service on 13 January 2026, and in May 2021 it overran the runway on landing at Sao Paulo Guarulhos.

What happens next?

Engineers must now identify the missing part and inspect the airframe before UR-82007 flies again. For now, Planespotters lists the An-124 as parked at Clark. Neither Antonov Airlines nor Japanese authorities has released further details, so the question of why a panel lifted off a 41-year-old freighter mid-departure — and whether the crew's decision to continue was justified — remains open.