Flight Test:

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FIRST FLIGHT TEST!!

CESSNA 162 SKYCATCHER

After a forty year drought, during which Cessna did not produce a new piston single engine design, the SkyCatcher has finally arrived.

The rock-solid reputation Cessna has built up over eighty nine years for making single engine piston aircraft now rests on the SkyCatcher.

Yet the prototypes suffered two crashes during flight testing, so the SkyCatcher is probably the most thoroughly proven new light aircraft ever. As it is intended to be used as a trainer, more than any other characteristic, it must have fool-proof handling.

Cessna has been understandably slow to let the General Aviation media loose on their new baby. Aero TV is the first to fly the SkyCatcher and SA Flyer is proud to be able to bring you this flight test as an exclusive first print publication.

Development

When Cessna began building piston singles again in 1996, the smallest model was the four seat 160 hp C172. This left a large gap in the market for an affordable and economical to operate two-seat trainer. This gap was being well filled by the burgeoning non--type certified light sport aircraft.

Cessna was being left behind in the market for the very aeroplanes it had built its long and proud history on. And so, in June 2006, Cessna announced its intention to do a feasibility study of a Light Sport Aircraft (LSA).

When a company with resources as big as Cessna gets going, it moves fast. The all new aircraft was unveiled the next month, on 24 July 2006, at Oshkosh as the Cessna LSA (it was also called the Cessna Sport). At the same time an all new high performance Cessna piston single called the NGP flew tantalizingly overhead. This was not put into production.

Just nine months after launching the programme, the prototype of the Cessna LSA first flew. Cessna then formally launched the SkyCatcher programme on 10 July 2007. The conforming prototype had its first flight on 8 March 2008 and the first production aircraft flew on 5 May 2008. In July 2009, Cessna announced that the 162 had completed flight testing to American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards and that the first aircraft were scheduled to be delivered in the fourth quarter of 2009.