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One obstacle to learning to fly these days is that so many of the GA training fleet is old … and many definitely look their age. It wasn’t that long ago that I cancelled a nighttime demo flight for a prospective student because I noticed that some of the old Cessna’s interior lights were inoperative. And early Cessnas didn’t offer much cockpit lighting to begin with to see the instruments.
Then I found a few bruises outside that had been covered with Duct-Tape and I just said no. A few years earlier, I’d tried to check out in an old Piper down in Florida that looked like it hadn’t been washed in 20 years. It flew OK, but after spending the money to fly it, I decided to pass on putting my family into it.
I’m not the only instructor nor renter that’s ever faced this situation either.
I was pretty excited last week to see a canary yellow Cessna 152 sitting outside of the south door of the AOPA building at AirVenture. The airplane was part of AOPA’s 152 reimagined project to encourage more people not only to learn to fly, but to also get back into the air at a relatively low cost. The airplane at Oshkosh had been rebuilt inside and out … new paint, new interior — even those cheapie plastic parts Cessna used were all new. The engine had been rebuilt and reset to zero time and the airplane had new Garmin avionics including a GPS installed.
This practically new Cessna 152 can be had for $99,000, or $89,000 for a Cessna 150. AOPA chose Aviat in Afton Wyoming to handle the refurbishment work and you can pick the color scheme when you order one. [Read more…] about AOPA’s 152 Reimagined