Here, an Mi-26 is transporting a retired Tupolev Tu-134 airliner. The long-serving airliner is set to become a training tool at the Emergency Situations Training Center outside of St. Petersburg, Russia.
However, the Halo is sometimes called into more dangerous situations.
With a range of nearly 500 miles, the Mi-26 is the helicopter of choice in situations that require large payloads to be delivered to inaccessible or unusual places. In the aftermath of the 2008 earthquake in Sichuan, China, an Mi-26 delivered heavy earth-moving equipment to remote mountain gorges to prevent flooding and mudslides.
In 1999, a Halo helicopter even hauled a frozen 23,000-year-old woolly mammoth out of the Siberian tundra.
