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.