The Mi-26 is the largest and most powerful helicopter ever to have gone into production.
- The first Mi-26 flew on 14 December 1977
- The fleet is estimated to number around 20 helicopters.
- In October 1999, a Mi-26 was used to transport a 25-ton block of ice encasing a well-preserved, 23,000 year-old Woolly Mammoth from the Siberian tundra to a lab in Khatanga, Taymyr, where scientists hoped to study the find and perhaps attempt to clone it.