Giant Transport Airplane to be Developed for Wind Turbine Components – Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Humans might face future air travel restrictions, but wind turbines could get a free pass if inventor Mark Lundstrom has his way.

How a Giant Aircraft could Ease Clean Energy Supply Chains

By Charlie King
October 17, 2025

Radia’s WindRunner aircraft could redesign how wind turbine blades and oversized cargo reach remote areas, bypassing outdated road infrastructure limits

The infrastructure supporting global ground transport serves daily traffic but struggles with oversized cargo. Supply chains across the world face increasing pressure as the scale of renewable energy components expands. Wind turbines in particular present a challenge due to their sheer size and the limitations of existing logistics networks.

Radia, founded in 2016 by aerospace engineer Mark Lundstrom, sets out to change this with its WindRunner aircraft. Designed to transport the world’s largest wind turbine blades, WindRunner reaches areas that roads and railways cannot access. Traditional infrastructure can move blades around 70 metres long, but the next generation of turbines requires blades exceeding 100 metres. This creates a need to rethink how energy projects move their largest parts.

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“Big Western wind turbine makers need direct financial support to make the investments needed to aid decarbonisation,” says Tim Dawidowsky, Chief Operating Officer of Siemens Gamesa. “The supply chain is facing substantial challenges that could limit production capacity and increase turbine prices.”

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Read more: https://sustainabilitymag.com/news/windrunner-how-a-giant-aircraft-ease-clean-energy-supply-chains

A promo video of the new aircraft;

As far as I can tell the aircraft hasn’t been built yet, they’re looking for funding.

Building an aircraft that size which can land on rough runways shall be, how can I put it, challenging.

I’m no aircraft engineer but I’ve flown light aircraft before. Hitting even a small bump at speed can flex the entire airframe. Large aircraft can have big fluffy wheels and long shock absorber assemblies which can help reduce the peak force inflicted by impacts on bumps, but large and long airframe structures are also more vulnerable to stress. If the front wheels of a 70m+ aircraft hit a bump which isn’t fully absorbed by the wheels and shock absorber assembly, 70m is a lot of leverage. Any slight flaw in the design and even a small bump could result in thousands of tons of force being exerted on components which aren’t designed to take such punishment.

It is just barely possible to build aircraft this large. Ukraine owned the world’s only Antonov An-225 Mriya until it was destroyed during the Russian invasion. The Antonov could carry a 70m cargo. But Ukraine’s ex-soviet airplane required a paved runway over two miles long to get airborne.

The ex-Soviet Antonov An-225 Mriya aircraft cost around $300 million to build. I find it difficult to imagine anyone landing a commercial aircraft which costs a third of a billion dollars on a dirt track.

Who still believes wind is the cheapest form of energy? Now all the easy wind locations have been taken, wind now apparently needs financial support to expand, for developing $300 million airplanes intended to be landed on dirt tracks in the middle of nowhere. The cost of wind power just got even more absurd than before.

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