Everyone believes that flying is not for the average person, and you must be a millionaire
to own and fly an airplane. That’s not totally true. The truth is, unless your mission is to
fly at over 25,000 ft at 300 knots, that’s when it gets expensive. But if you have more modest
aims for your flying, like flying at a little over 100 knots and your most frequent mission is making
500 cross-country flights, then there are truly some cheap options available.
Piper PA-12 Super Cruiser After Piper realized that
it couldn’t exist forever selling the J-3 Cub, it started making variants. The first of those
that got the "PA" designation is the PA-12 Super Cruiser, a three-seat update to the Cub
that you fly solo from the front seat. This plane is extremely versatile; you can fit floats on it
for water landings, skis to land on snow areas, and even rugged wheels to land somewhere remote.
Piper built nearly 4,000 of them between 1946 and 1948. Over the years, many of the remaining PA-12s
have gotten wing flaps, and more than a few have gotten metal coverings, though bush pilots prefer
fabric for its lightweight and easy repairability. Super Cruisers are surprisingly plentiful. You can
still find mostly stock PA-12s for around $60,000, though 75 to $80,000 or thereabouts is more
likely. They’re easy planes to work on, though as with any plane built in the late ’40s, you need to
keep an eye on the metal structures, all of which, like the Super Cruiser’s skin, can be replaced.
Piper Tomahawk The Tomahawk looked nothing like any
previous or subsequent Piper, and because of that, it flew like nothing that came out of Vero Beach.
One of the ideas behind the Tomahawk sounds really odd:
the plane was designed to be harder to recover from a spin than its competitors.
The idea was that it would allow instructors to show students how to get out of a spin better
than planes like the 150 and 152, which were far more docile in their spin characteristics.
The Tomahawk is sporty, has great visibility, and has a great engine. Most Tomahawks fall within the
$35,000 range, but if you want to cut corners and lose your money quickly, you can get them
for less than $10,000, like this one here haha, though purchase prices are climbing, possibly
due to flight schools looking to get their hands on cheap trainers before they all disappear.
Beechcraft Musketeer. When this plane was introduced,
it was a big deal. With all-metal fuselages, trailing link landing gear, and great handling
characteristics, the musketeer is fun to fly. Upfront, most have Lycoming engines,
though some early ones had Continental engines. The Musketeer family are solid planes, decent
performers, roomier than just about all of their competitors, and reasonable to own and maintain.
There’s a lot of confusion over which Musketeer is which, and that’s understandable, as Beechcraft,
at the time, did a terrible job of not only naming the plane
but also keeping the different varieties of it distinct in the potential customers’ eyes.
There are Musketeers ranging from the 150-hp Sport, designed for training with one fewer window
per side, to the Custom III (which was later named "Sundowner") to the Super III, a 200-hp fixed-gear
model that would cruise at an advertised 130 knots and close to that in real life.
The 200-hp, retractable-gear Sierra isn’t a great bargain on the used market, though it’s developed
from the same type certificate as the original Musketeer of 1966. To add to the confusion,
the Custom had a subsequent model called the Custom III, though there was no Custom II, and
the Super III never had a Super I or a Super II. The cheapest musketeer I saw during my research
was listed for $30,000, and it’s just one. The others ranged from 40 to $60,000, which is a
bargain compared to a Cessna Skyhawk of the same vintage that will go for around twice as much.
American AA-1 Yankee also known as the Grumman American Lynx
Designed by Jim Bede back in the 1960s, the AA-1 was indeed launched as a rival to Cessna’s
dominant 150 trainers. The Yankee is a little faster than the 150, and it has some cool styling
too, including a sliding canopy that owners love. Although the handling of the AA-1 is not
exactly trainer-like, they are very light on the controls, it takes a little time to get used to,
but once the pilot gets used to it, it is a lot of fun. Several companies built versions of the AA-1,
and every one of them made at least a few changes to the basic design,
so if you’re going AA-1 shopping, do your homework and know what you’re getting. There are a few
popular mods out there, including engines up to 150 hp, which makes the AA-1 a fast machine.
And the plane, like its four-place siblings, tends to cost less to maintain than comparable
models from other companies. You can find mostly stock AA-1s for $40,000,
they can go even as high as 60 to $80,000 for more up-to date models.
Cessna 175 Skylark. Introduced in 1958,
two years after the 172 Skyhawk, the 175 was designed to fill a niche between the 172 and the
faster 182. The Skylark wasn’t simply a 172 with a different engine, it was just in fact a step-up
plane for those wanting more speed, power, and hauling ability than a 172 but less than a 182.
Cessna built more than 2,000 of them, around half of which are still flying around today.
You can still find great 175 values, as they aren’t highly prized by flight school owners,
who want slightly older Skyhawks with their well-known engines.
Still, prices on 175s are heading north, but you can find these birds for around $40,000.
That is about half of what most Skyhawks are going for. For that price, you get a good airplane.
Cessna 140 When this airplane was introduced in the 40s,
it was loved and highly accepted. Despite the fact that the post-war market was saturated with cheap
airplanes, Cessna still managed to sell more than 7,500 of them over its five-year production run.
The little taildragger had pleasing and docile handling
and great landing behavior. The side-by-side seating is cozy,
with a cockpit similar in dimensions to that of the 150, which is indeed an outgrowth of the 140.
The Continental C-85 and 90 engines it uses are cheap to get overhauled compared to other popular
light plane engines of the day, and parts are still available through a variety of sources.
You can find nice 140s on the used market for $40,000 or less. Ones in need of a little work
sell for about 20 to $30,000, which might be a bargain once you address the plane’s needs.
Grumman Tiger. The Tiger is as versatile
as the newest planes in the market today. Fun to fly, fast enough, capable and affordable to own,
are the defining characteristics of this plane. Visibility in this plane is great,
with cruising speeds of over 130 knots, the Tiger gets down the road,
and this it does with fixed gear and the 180-hp Lycoming O-360 engine. The range is surprisingly
good too, at nearly 700 nautical miles. You can get a good used Tiger for about $45,000,
which might not sound all that cheap until you consider the alternatives.
What plane will give you around 135 knots true, 650+ nautical miles of range, the ability to carry
four, and a sporty feel for that same price? There are not many alternatives out there,
especially when you factor in the reasonable ongoing maintenance costs of the Tiger.
Flightstar 2SC. You can get Flightstars
as single-seaters true ultralights. In this case, you don’t need a pilot’s license,
never mind a medical certificate, to fly it. The two-seat versions are experimental airplanes,
even though they’re built using conventional ultralight materials. Flightstars are built
with aluminum tubing for the fuselage and wing structures, with the wings covered in sailcloth.
These materials help create very light aircraft. Its enclosure keeps you out of the wind,
and its simple construction and design mean easy flying and reduced maintenance. By law,
they are designed to be very slow. Ultralights can’t exceed 55 knots
max straight and level speed, and the experimental versions aren’t much faster.
They also fly in a way that is very adverse to yaw and sensitivity to gusts. The Flightstar II
comes standard with side-by-side seating with dual controls and three-axis flight controls.
There are no flaps, which is okay because the plane slips beautifully. Planes like this aren’t
for long cross-country flights because they’re slow, have limited range, and there are few
creature comforts for the occupants. Instead, they excel at exactly what they were designed to do, go
flying low and slow, the way all flying once was and the way, many feel it’s best done to this day.
You can find them for around $15,000 with good sailcloth and low time,
giving you a low initial investment, low maintenance costs, and a sky-high fun factor.
Taylorcraft. The airplane’s design has a conventional layout:
a high-wing, fabric-covered, two-seat aircraft. The basic design has remained
unchanged since 1936, and this design is sold as a personal sport aircraft today.
Taylorcraft are simple machines that fly like lightweight, high-lift taildraggers do, light
on the controls and with a good bit of adverse yaw. It’s a pretty plane. And while there’s not
a lot of elbow room in the front seat, it’s a more social experience, and the center of gravity isn’t
affected as much when bringing along a passenger. You can find Taylorcrafts for less than $20,000,
and really nice examples can be had for less than $30,000.
Beechcraft Bonanza. Bonanzas are great values when it comes to doing what Bonanzas do well,
which is haul a whole family and go places fast. But the thing is, how much you pay for this plane
is only a small part of the problem. With older V-tail Bonanzas, maintenance costs can be both
high and unpredictable. Bigger engines, constant-speed props, retractable landing gear,
obsolete radios, and hard-to-find tails that are made of a rare material add up to potentially
high maintenance costs. But if you’re up for the possibility of having to pay some hefty bills down
the line, even if they might be intermittent ones, a mid-to-late ’60s Vee-tail is hard to beat. With
true airspeeds of 165 knots or better, the ability to fly long cross-country legs, the power to fly
high, and the comfort and panache of Beechcraft quality are all hard to beat. To get one in
great condition that won’t need work for years, you could be looking at $70,000 to $100,000,
which sounds like a lot of money, until you start comparing it with what you’d have to spend to
get a comparable-performance new plane. Then the value becomes clear. There is a 1970 model listed
for $150,000 on controller.com, but on average, they sell for anything between 200 and $350,000.