Like the rest of the piston-single resale market, good training airplanes are fetching top dollar, even ones that might have lived hard lives on a training line. Upgraded ones that were we’ll cared for in the hands of meticulous private owners sell for even more. Using the most current Winter 2020 Aircraft Bluebook as a starting point, I went shopping to see what money can buy. Let’s start with a Cessna 150—the old standard that somehow survived my own white knuckles during initial training in the early 1980s.
The earliest 150s are from 1959, and powered by 100-HP Continental O-200-A engines with an 1800-hour TBO. The Bluebook suggests an average typical retail price of $14,250 for a 1959 and $21,000 for the last of the 150s—the M model from 1977.