China's transport, tanker & heavy lift aircraft

Deino

General
Staff member
Super Moderator
Registered Member
2nd one is probably AI, none of the features match up. It's likely they took the close in photo and used AI to "expand" it.

But this would mean concerning the second confirmed flight yesterday ONLY this Image is real?

So called "Y-30" spotted again. More on weibo.

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huitong

Junior Member
Registered Member
View attachment 175057
This might also be real, the AI picture is likely someone trying to expand this image into a picture of the entire plane using AI hence everything that is added in like the wingtip and the other half of horizontal tail is all wrong.
The only real prototype has China’s red flag on the vertical tail fin. So this is also fake!
 

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ACuriousPLAFan

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
SOYO on Weibo:

Public sources mention an evaluation work of a four‑engine turboprop transport aircraft, which includes a weight figure of 80 tons.
This 80-ton figure is probably not MTOW; it is likely a weight class that is 80‑90% of MTOW.

20260526_123027.jpg

In the comment section:

b-axbcc: An optimistic estimate would be that this is the MLW (Maximum Landing Weight).
SOYO: Several tonne‑class figures were given, and 80 is the largest among them.

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Going by what he/she mentioned and assuming that the information is (close-to) accurate, then ~80-90% of MTOW at 80 tons would mean an MTOW figure range of 88.9 tons - 100 tons for the Y-15.

For reference, the Y-9's MTOW is about 65-70 tons.
 
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Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
I don't see why 80 tons wouldn't be MTOW. It's a perfectly servicable figure for a Y9 replacement. Quite useful and in line for a 4 engine turboprop of said size. The fact that the plane's fuselage is wide should not be any indication of mtow. Rather, that useful cargo to mtow ratio is lower than for a narrow body plane. Meaning less cargo weight carried than in a narrow body transport. But that is perfectly okay because that's exactly what one wants from a transport plane - volume rather than weight, if one has to be prioritized.
 
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