The words “Cessna Skyhawk” have particular significance for anyone who has of all time wanted to larn to wing. At 27 pess long and 8 pess tall. with a 36-foot wingspread. a 140 miles per hour cruising velocity. and room for two grownups and their baggage. more people have learned to wing with a Cessna Skyhawk than with any other plane in air power history. In fact. the Cessna Skyhawk is the best-selling plane of all clip. Clyde Cessna built his first plane in 1911. and Cessna became a celebrated name in air power. Cessna built 750 sailplanes for the ground forces in World War II. introduced the Skyhawk in 1956. produced the first turbo-charged and cabin-pressurized single-engine planes in the sixtiess. delivered its first concern jet in the seventiess. topped $ 1 billion in gross revenues in the 1980s. and so. in one of the worst downswings in the history of air power concern. about went out of concern over the following decennary and a half.

Gross saless of general air power aircraft. which had topped out at 17. 000 planes per twelvemonth. dropped to 12. 000 planes within a twelvemonth. and over the following decennary eventually hit stone underside at 928 planes for the full industry. During the same clip. Cessna’s gross revenues of piston-engine planes. like the Skyhawk. dropped from 8. 000 per twelvemonth to merely 600. Cessna was forced to put off 75 per centum of the employees at its piston-engine plane mills ( Cessna besides makes concern jets and larger planes ) and finally stopped doing piston-engine planes wholly. However. after the economic system improved and the U. S. authorities approved the General Aviation Revitalization Act ( excluding merchandise liability cases on any plane over 18 old ages old ) . Cessna decided to get down constructing its legendary Skyhawks once more.