10 (More) Cheapest Planes In The Sky

But if you have more modest aims for your flying fun, then there are truly some cheap options available, as you'll see.

As Bob Dylan said about used planes way back when, "!the times they are a' changin'." And maybe he wasn't singing specifically about planes, but the point stands. For the past 40 years, there has been an abundance of used planes, overflow from a time when Wichita et al. were cranking out 10,000-plus planes a year. And since we now know that most planes last if not forever then for a long, long time--- longer than a pilot's flying career, in many instances---that great overabundance kept used prices down. It was win/win/win. You got a cheap, good-quality plane that wasn't too expensive to keep in flying shape. The advantages of buying used greatly outweighed the negatives and were too great for most of us to pass up.

Two things have happened to change that sight picture. The first is that those older planes aren't as numerous as they once were. While some are lost to accidents and natural disasters, a large number go away for lack of use. Others become obsolete, and yet others become orphans, with the type certificate owner no longer in business to supply replacement parts.

So with fewer planes on the supply side, higher prices were bound to come and they have. Many models, especially high-performance planes, have increased in value at a rate far exceeding that of inflation. In the past 10 years alone, typical asking prices for many GA singles with bigger engines and constant speed props have doubled in price. Many others are close to that.  And with the used fleet shrinking with no end in sight, there's no mechanism in place to reverse that trend.

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The other thing that's happening is that there are fewer secrets, fewer great planes that haven't yet shown up on the radar of prospective buyers. Several of the planes in our lineup here fit that bill, planes that were unwanted or unloved for years but today are getting some attention. We might be partially to blame for spreading the news about these models, but the forces of the marketplace in the age of the internet are unstoppable. If there's an underappreciated plane out there, the story is going to get out.

Another thing about our new lineup: some of these planes have long had a bad rap, often deservedly so. But as with the Piper Tomahawk, which suffered a spate of spin accidents early in its production life, the cause of the problem was in every case understood and fixed. Not buying a Tomahawk, or any plane, for that matter, because of a problem in its past makes no sense to us. Is it a perfect plane? Even if there were such a thing, the Tomahawk would not be it. But it's a fun plane to fly, cheap to buy and cheap to own. We think a lot of pilots would be willing to overlook a few flaws for that deal.

So with this as a reminder and without further ado, our lineup of 10 (More) Cheapest Planes In The Sky.

Backwoods taildraggers are all the rage these days as more and more pilots are putting big tires on their taildraggers and heading out to mountain strips and gravel bars far and wide. Consequently, planes that used to go for cheap aren't anymore. Super Cubs are six-figure airplanes, Maules sell within a week of listing, and even Kitfoxes, the star of the 1980s and early '90s kitbuilding boom, are hot sellers today. Still, there are a few good old-fashioned tube and rage taildraggers out there that you can still get for pennies on the Super Cub dollar, though that supply is running thin.

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 (two side by side in back and one in the front) update to the Cub that you fly solo from the front seat.

The PA-12 came out of Lock Haven a simple airplane, though it did boast a metal spar and a whopping 108-hp Lycoming O-235 four-cylinder engine. Piper built 3,760 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 covering, though bush pilots prefer fabric for its light weight and easy repairability.

Super Cruisers are surprisingly plentiful, and while you could pay better than $150,000 for a tricked-out model with big tires and a 180-hp engine conversion, you can still find mostly stock PA-12s for around $30,000, though $40,000 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.

If you're somewhat acquainted with the American AA-1, you might think of it as a two-seat version of the popular four-seat Cheetah or the Tiger models, or you might think of it as a low-wing trainer competitor of the iconic Cessna 150. It's kind of both of those things, though it's more accurate to say that it's neither. It is, in fact, one of the strangest birds in the sky---in the way it flies, the way it's designed, and in its history.

Designed by the famous/infamous Jim Bede back in the 1960s, the AA-1 was indeed launched as a rival to Cessna's dominant 150 trainer, which it called the "Commuter." (We don't know either.) The little two-seat single from Wichita flies like a trainer. Though maybe it's the other way around---that we think trainers fly or should fly a certain way---because that's how 150s roll. The AA-1 didn't, and doesn't.

The plane's aluminum fuselage skin is bonded to the structure for a very smooth surface and reduced drag. That feature, along with folding wings, believe it or not, was abandoned before certification. Both were Bede's ideas, and he was gone even before the plane got FAA approval.

When it did, the AA-1 Yankee was blazing fast---well, at least a little faster than a 150---and it had cool styling, including a sliding canopy that owners love, only slightly less so when it's raining.

The handling of the AA-1 is very un-trainer-like. Original Yankees were legendarily light on the controls, and one flew it in the pattern more like a Mooney than a Cub. If it took a little getting used to, once the pilot got used to it, it was, and is, a lot of fun.

We won't go into the long story about the several companies that built versions of the AA-1, but 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 going 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 $20,000, or even less, and even nicely modded ones go for not a lot. Especially when you factor in how much fun these planes are to fly, they're worth a long look.

Small-plane designers today love trying out new powerplants, and some of those experiments are big successes, though most fall short of expectations. The Cessna 175 Skylark, introduced soon after the 172 Skyhawk (which, ladies and gentlemen, needs no introduction), wasn't simply a 172 with a different engine. It was just as Cessna envisioned it---a step-up plane for those wanting more speed, power and hauling ability than a 172 but less than a 182. It was exactly that, too, though it got little love back in the day, mostly because of that engine.

The 175 is actually built to a different type certificate than the 172, a rarity in GA then and now, and its engine, the Continental GO-300, was widely regarded as a failure, for some good and not-so-good reasons. Though for a failure, the 175 did well. Cessna built more than 2,000 of them, around half of which are still flying around somewhere---for some reason, a lot of 175s wound up in Europe.

The "G" in the engine's designation stands for "geared," and indeed the GO-300 features a reduction gearbox, allowing the prop to spin at happy-place rpm (2,400 rpm) while allowing the engine to do its reciprocating thing at better than 3,000 rpm, which, along with other design changes, upped the output of the GO-300 to 175, compared to 145 for the O-300 in the 172.

Many pilots, who back in the late '50s were apparently creatures of habit, couldn't get their paws around the idea of operating the engine at the recommended, higher-than-usual 3,200 rpm and instead throttled way back to "preserve" the motor, which had exactly the opposite effect, reducing the GO-300's overhaul interval to even less than the recommended 1,200 hours, compared to the 1,800 hours of the non-GO-300s.

When operated correctly, the engine does pretty much what Continental said it would, and the plane is indeed faster than Skyhawks of the day, and, with its slightly beefier fuselage, it carries more load.

Today, with 180-hp direct-drive engines prevalent, the geared engine is obsolete, though many of them are still flying in 175s through the sheer force of economic necessity.

You can still find great 175 values, as they aren't highly prized by flight school owners, who want slightly less old Skyhawks with their well-known engines. 

For that price, you get a good airplane, though one that has engine costs lurking and that isn't cheap to maintain, as is the case with most machines that are 60 years old.

Back in the '70s, a lot of companies wanted to be in the two-seat trainer market (unlike today, when none of the former Big Three manufacturers offer a two-seater). Piper's mid-'70s attempt to get in on the purpose-built trainer gold was called the Tomahawk. It looked nothing like any previous Piper, or subsequent one, for that matter, and flew like nothing that came out of Vero then or now.

Looks-wise, the defining feature of the PA-38-112 (the "112" in the designation is for its Lycoming O-235 engine's horsepower rating) is its T-tail, which adds to its visual appeal while giving it odd, light-at-all-the-wrong-times handling on takeoff and landing. Piper at the time of the Tomahawk's introduction (late '70s) was infatuated with T-tails, as the company spread them Oprah-like around its fleet---"You get a T-tail, and you get a T-tail!"

Now, one of the ideas behind the Tomahawk sounds really odd (there's that word again) to many pilots today: 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. We'll never know how many spin accidents the "improved" flight handling prevented, keeping pilots safe later on in their flying careers, though "zero" is a fair guess. We do, however, know that it caused numerous fatal spin accidents during that training that was being done to prevent later spin fatalities.

There were, in fact, so many such fatal accidents resulting from spin training gone horribly awry that the FAA looked into it and found that Piper had modified the wing post certification in order to cut weight, which resulted in cutting both weight and stiffness, which accounted, many claim, for the plane's unpredictable spin behavior. The FAA mandated a fleet-wide AD to add stall strips, which seemed to do the trick. Today the Tomahawk's safety record is comparable to or slightly better than its competitors.

On to the good stuff, of which there's plenty.

The Tomahawk is sporty, has great visibility, has a great engine, the O-235, and is kind of cute. It's not fast, but then again, what two-seat trainer is (yes, the T-38, but besides that one?).

And they're still cheapish on the used market. You can still find them for less than $20,000, though purchase prices are climbing, possibly due to flight schools looking to get their hands on cheap trainers before they all disappear. So on the upside, if you decide to move your Tomahawk after a couple of years, it's likely there will be a ready market for it.

After we published our previous article on cheap planes we were not surprised to see readers give their suggestions on what we missed. Tops on that list was the Cessna 140.

Developed in the early 1940s, the Cessna 140 and the budget version, designated the 120, were the first in a lineup of mostly-metal (they had fabric-covered metal wings) light planes that would evolve into Cessna's lineup of entry-level and better single-engine aircraft, some of which are still in production today.

The 140/120 was an immediate hit, and even though 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.

Powered by the Continental C-85 or C-90 of 85-90-hp, the little taildragger had pleasing and docile handling and decent (for a taildragger) 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 C-85 and 90 engines, by the way, 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.

Understandably, some consider the Cessna 120 to be the precursor to the 140, but it's actually just a budget version of the 140, lacking flaps and a rear window. On many existing 120s, all of those options have been added by later owners through the STC process, making the two planes identical for all intents and purposes.

There are lots of 140s still in the fleet, but not many regularly pop up for sale. Their owners love them.

You can find nice 140s on the used market for $25,000 or less. Ones in need of a little love (read: money and time) can be had for $15,000, but that might not be a bargain once you address the plane's needs.

There are also a number of STCs available for more powerful engines, including up to 150-hp, which make the otherwise laidback 140 a real tiger.

Okay, so there are two American/Grumman flyers in this 10 cheapest roundup, and while the two-seater deserves a look, the star of this show is arguably the AA-5 series, including the Tiger, a four-seater that's about as versatile a small plane as you'll find anywhere. Fun to fly, fast enough, capable and affordable to own, the Tiger is a great first plane or forever plane.

Like many of the planes in this lineup, the production history of the AA-5 (there are AA-5, AA-5A, AA-5B and AG-5B versions) is long, harrowing and not particularly interesting if all you're looking for is a good used plane, but do know that the later models are better in a number of ways, including having more easily removed cowlings, better ventilation and updated, 24-volt electrical systems. The bad news is, the marketplace understands these distinctions, and later-model AA5's are fetching a pretty penny.

Like the two-seater, the four-seat Tiger boasts bonded skins, to eliminate lots of rivets and cut down on drag, making it, if not a speedster, then at least a respectable short cross-country flyer. The fighter-style canopy, which works well and seldom has issues, lets a lot of sun in, so it can get the greenhouse effect going. The vents on later models are decent, luckily, but on warm days you might wish you had a/c, which you won't have. Another common gripe about the canopy is that the plane and everything inside it gets wet when you get in or get out of it in the rain. The best technologies for this shortcoming are old ones, umbrellas and spare towels.

With cruising speeds in the high 130s, the Tiger gets down the road, and this it does with fixed gear and the 180-hp O-360. Remember to use the carb heat when called for. Range is surprisingly good, too, at nearly 700 nm.

You can get a good used Tiger for less than $40,000, 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? We're not coming up with many alternatives, especially when you factor in the reasonable ongoing maintenance costs of the Tiger. That said, the asking prices of many of the planes in this lineup have been creeping up in recent years, so you might have to do a little hunting to find the right plane.

In past editions of 10 Cheapest Planes, some readers have complained that the planes we featured were going up in asking price. It's true, they are. So finding a sleeper is a coup, and we've got one for you---the Taylorcraft, offered in various configurations and various designations over the years but which at heart is a two-seat side-by-side fun flyer with Cub-like handling. The "Cub" connection is impossible to avoid, as the "Taylor" in "Taylorcraft," one C.G. Taylor, is the guy who designed the first Cubs for what was then still his own company, Taylor Aircraft, which before long became Piper Aircraft, and you know that story. C.G. went off, along with his brother Gilbert, to found a new company, Taylorcraft Aircraft. The company's new plane, the Taylorcraft, incorporated a few ideas Taylor wanted to get into his Cubs but never had the chance to, the biggie being side-by-side seating.

Like Pipers manufactured in the 1930s and early '40s, 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, too, sleeker than Cubs or Champs, even though those two models were tandem-seating designs. And while there's not a lot of elbow room in the front seat of a T-Craft, it's a more social experience, and the center of gravity isn't affected as much when bringing along a passenger. Taylorcraft's military variant, the L-2 Grasshopper, was a tandem design, as were its D-model planes.

The most numerous Taylorcraft was the C-model, though. It's the plane that pilots think of when the name "Taylorcraft" is mentioned. It is the classic, side-by-side, Continental-powered taildragger with a big wing that was the outgrowth of the original Taylor Cubs.

You can find Taylorcrafts for less than $20,000 (sometimes closer to $10,000!), and really nice examples can be had for less than $30,000. Because it's a rag-and-tube design (steel tubing fuselage covered in doped fabric), you can fix a T-Craft as easily as a Cub. The type is powered by a variety of different engines, but mostly with Continental engines, parts for which, even after all these years, are still readily available.

The Beechcraft Musketeer is probably the most unfortunately named aircraft in history. At the time of its introduction, the Disney Mouseketeers were a big thing, and it was impossible for people to behave themselves and not call the B23 by that pejorative. On top of that, some people also find the model less than exquisitely beautiful. All of that is too bad, too, because the B23 is a good airplane. With all-metal fuselages with trailing link landing gear (for easy arrivals) and very nice flying manners overall, the planes are a pleasure to fly. Up front, most have Lycoming engines, from 150-200 hp, though some early ones had Continental engines.

In all, the B23s and B24s 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 them 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.

Beechcraft built more than 4,000 Musketeers and related, differently named models over the course of nearly 20 years---in 1983, Beechcraft ended production of the Model 23/24, which was around the same time that crosstown Wichita neighbor Cessna shut down its single-engine line.

Let's focus on just one iteration, the Sundowner, the later-production 180-hp model. You can find good examples with mid-time engines for between $30,000 and $35,000, which is a bargain compared to a Cessna Skyhawk of the same vintage that will go for around twice as much. These sleepers from Beech are definitely worth a long look.

Even if you're a longtime fixed-wing pilot, it's possible you've never heard of the Flightstar line of ultralight and ultralight-style aircraft, but the company produced a lineup of light-sport planes for a couple of decades that's among the best regarded in the very-light segment of sport aviation.

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. The Flightstar IISC is as sophisticated an aluminum tube and sailcloth single-engine sport plane as you'll find. Its enclosure keeps you out of the wind (largely, at least), and its simple construction and design (no flaps, for instance) means easy flying and reduced maintenance.

Regardless of which class of aircraft they fit into, Flightstars are built with aluminum tubing for the fuselage and wing structures, with the wings covered in sailcloth. These materials help create very, very light aircraft that are largely open to the elements. They are very slow---by law, 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, with much adverse yaw and sensitivity to gusts, that some describe as "kitey."

The Flightstar II is like this to a degree. It's not fast, and it has less-than-crisp handling characteristics, but because it's outfitted with double-sided wings (meaning there's both a top and a bottom surface), it has a stiffer, more responsive and less kitey feel than many comparable ultralight-style aircraft.

The most popular engines for ultralight-type birds are the Rotax lineup of two-cycle engines, which culminated in the Rotax 582, a liquid-cooled, two-stroke 65-hp engine with oil injection that weighs just 110 pounds dry. You can see the attraction. On some Flightstar IIs, you'll find lower-hp engines, like the Rotax 503, which is less sophisticated but even lighter than the 582.

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 flying. 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.

Flightstar Sportplanes delivered more than 300 two-place kits and planes over the years, and they do pop up for sale from time to time. Even the nicest ones can be had 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.

When one thinks of planes that might compose any roundup of "cheapest," one doesn't usually think of the Beechcraft Bonanza. The Beechcraft mark, indeed, has long been thought of as the Cadillac of plane brands. And our cover plane is a very nice example of one, to be sure.

But for a variety of reasons, there are Bonanzas that are great values when it comes to doing what Bonanzas do well, which is go places fast.

As with most material possessions in life, how much you pay for something is only a part of the total cost calculus, and with older, complex airplanes, the purchase price is only part of the consideration. With older V-tail Bonanzas (we'll say late '60s and earlier models), 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!all of these things 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 a hard value 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.

Still, for a plane with an engine that probably won't need work for several years, decent radios and good paint and interior, you could be looking at $70,000 to $90,000, which sounds like a lot of dough until you start comparing it with what you'd have to spend to get a comparable-performance new plane. Then the value becomes clear.

If you're looking for a lower purchase price, 1950s vintage Bonanzas can be had for very little, though their performance isn't quite as stellar as later models. We found a 250-hp 1957 model with 500 hours on its engine, tip tanks and good paint for an asking price of $47,000.

It's true that there are risks to owning older airplanes. But when it comes to Bonanzas, the rewards, many believe, will very likely carry the day.