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That's a lot of planes

N941WR

Legacy Member
Every time I see a Swift or Falco F8, or a (fill in the blank) I think it would be a nice airplane to own. Then I look up the performance numbers and realize I already own the better airplane, even though it may not have retractable gear or be as beautiful as the Falco.

What really surprises me is the number of RV's now flying when compared to production planes.

The Swift, in all its variants only saw 1,501 roll off the assembly lines.

The Falco F8 production didn't even top 100 and I suspect the number of homebuilt F8's is just a handful.

We passed the Champ (7AC) with over 7,200 built.

However...

We have a LONG way to go to catch the J3 Cub at 19,888 US built Cubs plus another 150 built in Canada.

Cessna put out 31,533 150/152's

The Piper has produced almost 33,000 PA28's (Cherokee).

As expected, the 172 stands at over 44,000 built.

While the number of RV's is impressive, we need to get busy pounding rivets if we ever hope to catch Piper or Cessna.

Just some fun numbers to look at.
 
Well. I love RV 's. I am building one, but my first love was the Temco Swift. It is one sexy plane. The Super Swift is not really a slouch. Even the old 125 hp planes are still just plain classy. If I could have both, I would.
 
Really Interesting Numbers

Really like looking at those numbers.

Now asking, wonder how many of each is still flying, and how long production vs., percentages for the same number of RV's.

10% of 100,000 says something for the RV!

Thanks for sharing the numbers!

Best regards,
Mike Bauer
 
And what really impresses me.... is the very few service bulletins Van's has issued in the past 45 years.

Own a certified aircraft and.... you will break out into a sweat every time you head to the mailbox.
 
kit numbers

Does anyone know how many Van's kits have been sold in total?
Complete kits or tail kits? Obviously more tail kits are sold than the rest, but I'm not aware that they have published this number, and I'm sure that they do analyze this to increase the number of completions.

Some of the business practices that Van's has adopted I believe have greatly contributed to their success in the market, and one of those is allowing builders to get a taste for building with just the tail kit. This is still a significant investment, but far less than if you had to buy the whole kit. It's like the dealer giving out free crack to get you hooked! :D
 
...
What really surprises me is the number of RV's now flying when compared to production planes.

...

The Falco F8 production didn't even top 100 and I suspect the number of homebuilt F8's is just a handful.
I always thought I wanted to build a wood airplane, and the only reason I didn?t start a Falco was the complexity and low completion rate. I still think it?s one of the sharpest airplanes out there.

N941WR said:
We passed the Champ (7AC) with over 7,200 built.
Not a totally fair comparison; you?re comparing a single model to an entire product line. How many Aeroncas were built in total, and over what period of time?;)

N941WR said:
However...

We have a LONG way to go to catch the J3 Cub at 19,888 US built Cubs plus another 150 built in Canada.?
Even more remarkable is that Piper built that many of a single model in less than 1/4 of the time it took to build half that many RVs.

N941WR said:
While the number of RV's is impressive, we need to get busy pounding rivets if we ever hope to catch Piper or Cessna.?
REALLY busy. Cessna built it?s 100,000th single-engine airplane in 1975. :)
 
Yeah. But SINCE 1975, I don't think Cessna has built 10,000.
1975 is about when Van got started. So I think Van is beating the field now.

Cessna delivered 129 172Ss, 46 182T, 40 T206, 23 TTx last year. That's 238 single engine recips. Extrapolate over 33 years (Cessna didn't build between '86 and '98) and you get 7854.

Those numbers are above what I've seen in the past too (for a while the 182 was in the single and no digits). Although '98-'08 was much higher production overall than '08-'17 so it's hard to say if they have produced 10000 or not since '75 without going through all the GAMA numbers.
 
Yeah. But SINCE 1975, I don't think Cessna has built 10,000.
1975 is about when Van got started. So I think Van is beating the field now.

I used to own N2123P, which was a C-172S. The serial number was 10000 (Ten Thousand). Cessna has built a shi*t-load of airplanes....

-Marc
 
I used to own N2123P, which was a C-172S. The serial number was 10000 (Ten Thousand). Cessna has built a shi*t-load of airplanes...
I suspect in the years right after they re-started production, the annual build rate was much higher. It doesn't surprise me that it's over 10000.
 
I don't know how many total planed Vans has sold; however, when I took a tour I was told they average a complete kit every day. They don't include tail kits in that number. I'm sure that rate was much much much lower from their start through the early 2000's.
 
When I used to own a Grumman, the most common question I'd hear was "Which RV is that? You build it yourself?". According to Wikipedia they only produced 5102 aircraft, including both the two-seat and four-seat models, so in reality RV's really do outnumber Grummans by almost 2-to-1.
 
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