Antonov Aviation Scientific-Technical Complex was founded in 1946 by a famous aircraft designer Oleg Antonov. More than one hundred types and modifications of airplanes of different classes and purposes have been designed since the Complex creation. Among them should be mentioned: multipurpose transport planes An 2, An 74; cargo planes An 8, An 12, An 22 Anthey, An 26, An 32, An 72, An 70; super heavy-lifters An 124 Ruslan and An 225 Mriya; passenger planes An 10, An 14, An 24, An 28, An 38, An 140; special purpose planes - aerial photography An 30, meteolab An 30M, water bomber An 26P, An 32P; search and rescue An 26M, polar version An 74 etc. The total of 22000 Antonov airplanes have been built. The advantages of these planes are the structure reliability and economic efficiency, universal transport features, possibility to operate from unpaved airfields and the simplicity of maintenance.

Aleksandr Zakharov was working for Antonov Aeronautical Scientific/Technical Complex (Antonov Design Bureau, Kiev, Ukraine) more than 17 years. At first I designed mountings and components for hydraulic systems of the An 32, An 72, An 124 Condor and An 225 Mriya aircraft. After that I was Leading Designer of hydraulic and landing gear systems during the assembly and the flight test of the first An 124 aircraft. Finally I was working as Team Manager, and planned and controlled project designing systems (15 people team), managed the systems integration, analyzed, designed and developed hydraulic system architecture and hydraulic components for the Antonov aircrafts: An 124, An 70, An 140, An 218 and documentation for the An 28, An 74, An 124 certification. I also analyzed reliability and performance of aircraft and components, designed a special cooling system for the An 71(AWACS) aircraft. I created two inventions relating to aircraft evacuation and was a government investigation team member.