The Cessna 172 Skyhawk shared its 70th birthday with parent company Textron Aviation’s Top Hawk Program, which is celebrating its 10th. Top Hawk provides student pilots with an opportunity to learn to fly, and the Skyhawk is among the most popular trainers in the field.
While the Skyhawk is nice to fly this basically means that you spend a lot of money on an oldtimer if you buy one. Hardly anyone would consider buying a car with basically unchanged mid-50s technology that has been fitted with a digital dashboard.
2025 winners included United Flight Systems, Lunken Flight Training Center, Flex Air, and VNE Aviation.
You’ll spend a lot of money on any airplane worth flying in today’s market… yes, a generalization on my part and I’m certain there are exceptions.
The Skyhawk is a classic and in my opinion, the fact that it has been around for 70 years speaks well of its designers. A good solid airplane and I wish I could afford to buy one!
Universities are the primary customers of these aircraft and since there’s nothing capping their tuition, there’s nothing to prevent Cessna or Piper charging exorbitant prices for old aluminum airplanes. Why should Cessna go to the expense of developing new technology when student loans and parents savings are funding the old?
It’s pretty unbelievable that 172s are half a million dollars now when they started out as reasonably affordable airplane for the middle class aviator. I get that there are some liability issues and regulatory burden that increases the price of GA aircraft, but the 172 costs at least 3x what it should.
It’s because of economies of scale and the fact that the Cessna 172’s biggest competitor isn’t the Piper Pilot 100i, the Cirrus SR-20, or the Diamond DA40-NG. The 172’s biggest competitor is a 50 year old airworthy 172 with a good set of logbooks.
In 1968 a new base model 172 cost twice the median annual income in the US. Today a base model 172 costs 8 times our current median annual income.
Cessna/Textron have built over 45,000 of them during those 70 years. No need to reinvent the wheel, when certification costs are crippling. Look at Ford for example. They’ve produced 40M+ F-150 trucks over 75 years. It still has a V-8 engine, 4 wheels, a bed, and a cab, even though the guts and tech have been upgraded a lot, just like the C-172.
um, not really, T.V. Keep in mind that in 1956, you could buy a nice little house for the price of a new C172. What made the 172 “affordable” was their indestructibility in training fleets, and thus the ready availability of used (if sometimes, flogged) aircraft at prices that a young family could swing.
I’m the second owner of a stock '59 C-172A that is still going strong. Its panel is still steam-gauge-IFR (moving-map on the yoke) that can do more than I ask of it these days. It has the tall gear, so unimproved fields are not a problem. I’m planning to fly it as long as its original owner did (a mid-western farmer’s wife who flew cross-country IFR well into her eighties). That will be a bit after we celebrate the old bird’s 75th birthday.
I doubt that I’m alone, or even unusual, amongst C172 owners.
It’s an incredible run that shows no sign of abating. There are a whole host of reasons for this. Keep it going and never look back. Stay away from diesel and electric and all will be well for a long time.
Is there any pilot in the Western world that hasn’t flown a 172?
Diamond DA40-NG… the “NG” stands for no good.
The price reflects not only Textron’s purchase of a $$ multi-million 50 year product liability insurance policy on each delivered airplane, every component supplier from Lycoming to the tires and spark plug wires and propeller manufacturer do the same, and pass that insurance bill along with the cost of making the product. Aluminum and labor are cheap. Protection from lawyers representing grieving families 30 years into the future isn’t…
What is the relative cost these days of flying a ~150 hp 4-place trainer over the traditional 2-place 100 hp trainer, for say the first 40 - 50 hours of flight training? In 1961 I learned in the Cessna 150, checked out in the 172 pretty quickly, but still for just recreational flying, $8 to $10 per hour vs $12 - $15 per hour made quite a difference in building my flight experience. One of the C150s I rented had full IFR capability, for the times, lacking only a transponder which not even all airliners had at the time.
What made them affordable was mass production that flooded the market. There’s no such demand now, but the cost of running a factory is still high. This is the case with many of the 60’s and 70’s airplanes.
Imagine if Cessna had bothered to corrosion proof their airplanes. We’d still be flying the 60’s vintage birds.
See the useful comment predating yours which states that a 172 has gone from twice median income to 8x median. That’s from going from the upper end of middle class being able to afford one pretty easily to nobody in the middle class being able to afford one. I’m not talking about used prices, that would be pointless because of the price ranges involved. You can buy a clapped out 172 that needs more than its value in work for less than the price of a new economy car or an example of the same model with all of the latest avionics and performance STCs retrofitted which costs hundreds of thousands.
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