Cessna 172

The Cessna 172 Skyhawk, received its type certificate from the FAA in 1955. It is an all-metal four-seat, single-engine, high-wing airplane with one door under each wing. The 172 was a direct descendent of the earlier Cessna 170, which used conventional (tailwheel) landing gear instead of tricycle (nosewheel) gear.

Early 172s looked almost identical to the 170, with the same straight aft fuselage and tall gear legs, but later versions incorporated revised landing gear, a lowered rear deck, and a aft window. Cessna advertised this added rear visibility as "Omnivision," a selling point which would have been a hard sell if the new fuselage's performance decrease had been publicized. The final structural development, in the mid-1960s, was the sweptback tail still used today. The airframe has remained almost unchanged since then, with updates to avionics and engines keeping it modern. Production ended in the mid1980s, but was resumed in 1996 with the 160 hp (120kW) 172S and 180 hp (135kW) 172SP.

The Skyhawk is one of the world's most popular flight training aircraft -- nearly every pilot in the western world has spent at least some time flying one. Historically, the Skyhawk's main competitors have been the Piper Cherokee, which is also very common, and the Beechcraft Musketeer, which is rarer and no longer in production. The older Skyhawks shipped with a 145 horsepower (110 kW) engine; later planes shipped with engines up to 180 horsepower (135 kW), though 150 or 160 hp (110 or 120 kW) is more common. Cessna produced a retractable-gear version of the 172 named the Cutlass RG, and also produced versions on floats. The normal cruising speed for a fixed-gear 172 ranges from about 105 to 125 knots, depending on the engine and vintage.

The Skyhawk is part of a large family of high-wing, tricycle-gear, single-engine Cessna planes, ranging from the two-seater 150/152 (no longer in production) to the more powerful 182 Skylane, the six-seat 206 Stationair, and the enormous fourteen-seat turboprop 208 Caravan, along with several other models no longer produced.