Right up front, well tell you the winners: The Cessna 172 and the Katana. In an effort to contain the size of this project, weve limited our investigation to mainstream models, including the Cessna 150/152, Cessna 172, Piper 140, Warrior and Tomahawk and, by special mention, the Diamond Katana, the only honestly new thing in flight training for the past two decades. In our first – and we hope not last – analysis, we measured the safety of the aircraft most commonly involved in primary training. In a joint research project with our sister publication, The Aviation Consumer, we launched an effort to assess the safety of different models of airplanes. Is that a credit to raw skill or the clever design of the average primary trainer? A little of both, we suppose, but from time to time, were asked to rate training aircraft solely on safety records, good or bad. And considering the risks involved in teaching a ham-fisted neophyte to fly, we wonder how it is that many survive for long. How about a tip of the hat for the long-suffering flight instructor, a hardworking professional who gets neither the respect nor the pay he deserves.
