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How many airframes have been built, of common GA types?

alioth wrote:

Cessna in their entire existence (70+ years) have built 152,000 aircraft. Ford sells that many cars every 8 days.

Perhaps so. What proportion of the originally built Cessnas to originally built Fords are still in service!

I suppose I should add:

Thurston Teal: 38 made, 7 still in service

Last Edited by Pilot_DAR at 25 Aug 13:01
Home runway, in central Ontario, Canada, Canada

MedEwok wrote:

Also, being rather new, most or all of them will see frequent use and thus be more visible than many more traditional types which tend to end up as hangar queens.

The utility value of a GA aircraft has little to do with design date. Many planes identified as “Hangar Queens” actually fly a lot hours during travel weekdays. One aircraft I know, usually referred to as “hangar queen” actually does 250 hrs per year, as it is being used for travel of two engineers. Some of our club planes are way below that.

Anyway, there are some 270 Stemme S10 flying. Shempp-Hirth built some 4500+ gliders and motor gliders, Alexander Schleicher are at over 9000 gliders and motorgliders. 1480 Glasflügel gliders have been built. Rolladen Schneider built 3000 gliders and DG has built around 2250. 250 Bölkow Phoebus have been built and 2700 Let L-13 Blanik. PZL Bielsko has built 4600 aircraft. 400 Doppelraab have been built and plenty other Vintage gliders.

mh
Aufwind GmbH
EKPB, Germany

Wood and fabric should be maintainable indefinitely, if wood is cleaned and re-glued when the life of the current glue expires. ( More than 70 years in use, and no age problems apparent yet.)

Maoraigh
EGPE, United Kingdom

Some aircraft may have quite an impact despite being produced in rather small numbers. The Aquila A210/211 series reached 200 airframes last year, but is already fairly widespread among German flight schools and clubs. Many recently qualified German pilots have trained on them. Also, being rather new, most or all of them will see frequent use and thus be more visible than many more traditional types which tend to end up as hangar queens.

A similar effect may apply to the Robin. 1000 airframes might not sound like much, but if most of them are flying in France they’re bound to be a familiar sight there.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

There are a lot of ultralight microlight/LSA planes flying too, and I’m sure some of them will fly for a long time. It’s perhaps harder to figure out how many, the engines are generally replaced not overhauled so the number of engines produced is maybe a better indication of how many hours flown versus how many planes are flying (?).

@LeSving, many of us involved with maintaining our (older) planes in the US and similar places don’t pay maintenance bills, or not often anyway, we just buy parts. My wife’s reaction to the endless series of cardboard boxes delivered to our house is to shake her head… The Internet is a dangerous thing

My primary flyer has about 1000 hrs total time in the last 47 years, it was owned by a guy who travelled a lot for much of that time and stored the plane, so I don’t think fatigue is going to be a problem, for me at least! Fatigue lives are huge by comparison and generally not published or specified for older types. That’s for a plane with cantilever wings – strut braced wings on light planes arent really fatigue items. Tri-Pacers will be flying, ummmm, for longer than most us want to gaze at them.

My plane rarely spends a night outside and is rarely wet, so I think corrosion is going to be OK too. Except for my cylinders perhaps, never should have used that borescope… The next set will be coated I think, not plain steel. More cardboard boxes. Probably wood crates in this case, cylinders made in China I’m guessing but delivered to me efficiently from out of state, tax free.

There are many thousands of planes already built, and fully depreciated, that can fly longer than anybody reading this will be alive. It makes a lot of sense for people like me to own, use and enjoy them indefinitely, aided by reasonable middle class income and good 21st century parts logistics. You won’t see me viewing that as a negative.

Last Edited by Silvaire at 18 Aug 14:39

Silvaire wrote:

most of them maintainable indefinitely

That is quite a stretch. Stressed aluminium has a definite life. It also corrodes. Sure, you can replace every part, but that is far beyond ordinary maintenance. You reach a point where the next “maintenance” bill is so high it is seldom worth it, like the wing spar on the AA5s. Tube and fabric is another matter. Not everyone lives on the prairie either, stuff corrodes faster by a factor 100 or more in marine environments. The only aircraft that actually will last “forever” with literally no maintenance are new carbon fiber microlights.

Speaking of which. How many microlights/LSA has been built? Who knows? Rotax passed 50k 912 series engines in 2014, and has in total built more than 200k aircraft engines. And there are other engines used, although in smaller numbers. At least 100k must have been built, probably more like 200k.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

One benefit of there having been let’s say 500,000 light aircraft built postwar, most of them maintainable indefinitely, is that I will never have to buy a new one. Given all the productive things I can do with my money, none of them involving depreciation, that strikes me as a very fortunate circumstance

I guess in this very interesting thread, we should also look at the ages in which the large numbers were produced. Obviously they are long gone.

Times where tens of thousands of planes were produced every year were the 1960ties and 70ties. Ever since then, the decline is brutal.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Cessna have made over 7000 Citations

Darley Moor, Gamston (UK)

A quick look at F-INFO shows approx 1000 DR.400s currently registered in France, which also strikes me as low. Mooney_Driver is right: there are 30-odd sub types with different engines etc, and with a few manufacturer name changes there could be more. It also lists 20 different types from other DR series, 15 HR types, 14 Dyn’aero MCR types and 138 different types of Jodel, all with numerous aircraft per type, which I haven’t looked through.

As Maoraigh says the DR.100 series is an overlap between Jodel and Robin, being built in Bernay (SAN), Beaune (CEA), and also amateur construction from plans. The designer’s initial is used in the type designator: D for Jean Délémontez, R for Pierre Robin and H for Chris Heintz; Jodel is from the first two letters of Édouard Joly and (son-in-law) Jean Délémontez; MCR from Michel Colomban and Christophe Robin (son of Pierre).

According to Francois Besse in La Saga Robin up to 1990 3,049 Robins were built, of which 2,414 were DRs (wood and fabric) and 1,323 were DR.400s. More DR.400s have been built after Pierre Robin sold the business but I haven’t found any references.

Production figures 1957-1990, not counting prototypes:

  • DR.100: 332 (+423 by SAN under licence)
  • DR.200: 350
  • DR.300: 409
  • DR.400: 1,323 (+??? since 1990)
  • HR.100: 168
  • R1000: 102
  • HR.100: 107
  • R2000: 102
  • R3000: 51
  • ATL: 132
    Which adds up to 3,067, not 3,049…
EGHO-LFQF-KCLW, United Kingdom
24 Posts
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