The median Cessna 152 in our sample asks $62,000 and has flown 18,589 hours. That is an enormous amount of flying for a two-seat trainer, and every priced airplane in our sample was built between 1978 and 1980.
Many of these airplanes spent their working lives in flight schools, and the figures hint at it. Registered aircraft in the family run to 1,687, and corporations hold 25.8% of them. A 152 is a 110 hp Lycoming two-seater, and what it costs to own is mostly a question of what those hours did to it.
What follows looks at the used market, the family, who owns the fleet, what the airplane costs to run and what the NTSB accident files record. Every figure comes from a named public source or a dated sample, and the sources are listed at the end.
Data used: FAA fleet through 2026-10-12; NTSB file through 2026-09-30; asking-price sample 2026-10-14.
A 152 with eighteen thousand hours on it
Cessna stopped building the 152 decades ago, so there is no manufacturer's list price to anchor on and we do not invent one. What exists is what sellers ask. We gathered 8 Cessna 152 listings from one marketplace on 14 October 2026, and 7 of them carried a usable asking price.
The median ask is $62,000, with prices running from $44,000 to $95,000. Every priced airplane in the sample was built between 1978 and 1980, and the median has flown 18,589 airframe hours.
The median 152 in our sample has flown 18,589 hours, about 7.7 times the engine overhaul interval.
That comparison deserves a caveat. Lycoming's interval counts engine hours, and an airframe this busy may have had its engine replaced or rebuilt more than once, so the ratio is a way to feel the scale, not a count of overhauls. The listings do not say how the engine or the airframe has been maintained, and that is the question a buyer needs answered.
This is a small sample. 7 priced listings is enough for a median and not enough for a verdict, and one unusually good airplane can move it. 1 listing carried no price. These are asking prices, not sales, and no individual listing is published. Prices were recorded to the nearest 1,000 dollars.
For the wider market, our guide to what a small plane costs puts the 152 in context. The trainer it replaced is covered in what a Cessna 150 costs, and the four-seat step up in what a Cessna 172 Skyhawk costs. A rival two-seater from Piper is covered in what a Piper PA-38 Tomahawk costs.
Show the asking-price table
| Model or band | Listings | Asking median (USD) | Asking range (USD) | Median total time (hours) | Sample years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 152 | 7 | $62,000 | $44,000 to $95,000 | 18,589 | 1978 to 1980 |
One airplane with two engine options
The FAA's type certificate data sheet gives the 152 a single approval date, 1977, and a single set of numbers: 110 hp, a maximum takeoff weight of 1,670 lb and 24.5 US gal of usable fuel. The sheet lists two Lycoming engines, the O-235-L2C and the O-235-N2C. For where the 152 sits among the rest, the guide to the main types of planes helps, and how fast the different Cessna models fly covers the performance side.
The Aerobat, the A152, is the aerobatic version, and it is a small part of the register: 48 aircraft (2.8%) against 1,637 in the standard trainer group.
Show the full model comparison table
| Model and approval year | Certified specification | Ownership context |
|---|---|---|
| 152Approved: 1977 FAA sheet | Lycoming O-235-L2C or O-235-N2C 110 hpMaximum takeoff weight: 1,670 lbFuel, total / usable: 26.0 US gal / 24.5 US galSeating: 2 seats | Registered: 1,637 all registrations; 1,617 valid (status V)Asking median: $62,000Primary engine TBO: 2,400 hours first cycle; 2,400 hours after overhaul 2,400 hours first cycle; 2,400 hours after overhaul |
| A152Approved: 1977 FAA sheet | Lycoming O-235-L2C or O-235-N2C 110 hpMaximum takeoff weight: 1,670 lbFuel, total / usable: 26.0 US gal / 24.5 US galSeating: 2 seats | Registered: 48 all registrations; 48 valid (status V)Asking median: Not shown for this designationPrimary engine TBO: 2,400 hours first cycle; 2,400 hours after overhaul 2,400 hours first cycle; 2,400 hours after overhaul |
A fleet that belongs to schools and clubs
The FAA register lists 1,687 aircraft in the 152 family, and 1,667 of them (98.8%) hold a valid registration, while 20 carry another status. Of the whole family, 1,441 records have a usable build year, and 1,425 of those are valid. That counts paperwork, not airplanes in the air: a valid registration says nothing about whether the aircraft is airworthy or flying.
- 1,0141970s
- 4271980s
246 records have a blank or invalid build year and are left out of the chart.
The register shows a short, sharp production run: 1,014 aircraft from the 1970s and 427 from the 1980s. Nearly all the 152 records carry that single label, 1,637 of them.
Owner mix is where the 152 stands apart. Individuals hold 31.1% of the register, and LLCs are right behind at 30.7%, just 7 registrations fewer. Corporations hold 25.8%, and co-owned aircraft 6.3%. The registry records the owner category, not how the airplane is used, but a corporation or an LLC owning a two-seat trainer usually means a flight school, a club or a rental fleet.
California (14.1%) and Florida (13.9%) lead the state table, with Texas (10.4%) third. Oregon makes the top four with 76 registrations (4.5%). The state field is the registrant's address, not where the aircraft flies, and LLC registrations can carry an address far from the airfield.
Download the fleet CSV by model and build year. Free to use, please link back. It counts all registrations and valid ones (status V) by model label and build year, including blank years, and contains no personal records.
Show the fleet tables
| Group | All registrations | Valid (status V) | Share of all registrations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 152 registry designation | 1,637 | 1,617 | 97.0% |
| A152 registry designation | 48 | 48 | 2.8% |
| Reims-built registry designations | 2 | 2 | 0.1% |
| Model label | All registrations | Valid (status V) |
|---|---|---|
| 152 | 1,637 | 1,617 |
| A152 | 48 | 48 |
| CESSNA F152 | 1 | 1 |
| F152 | 1 | 1 |
| Build decade | All registrations | Share of known years | Valid (status V) | Valid share of known years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1970s | 1,014 | 70.4% | 1,005 | 70.5% |
| 1980s | 427 | 29.6% | 420 | 29.5% |
| FAA code | Registrant type | All registrations | Valid (status V) | Share of all registrations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Individual | 525 | 507 | 31.1% |
| 2 | Partnership | 10 | 10 | 0.6% |
| 3 | Corporation | 436 | 435 | 25.8% |
| 4 | Co-Owned | 106 | 106 | 6.3% |
| 5 | Government | 63 | 63 | 3.7% |
| 7 | LLC | 518 | 518 | 30.7% |
| 8 | Non Citizen Corporation | 29 | 28 | 1.7% |
| 9 | Non Citizen Co-Owned | 0 | 0 | No records |
| State | All registrations | Valid (status V) | Share of all registrations |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | 238 | 236 | 14.1% |
| FL | 234 | 232 | 13.9% |
| TX | 175 | 173 | 10.4% |
| OR | 76 | 76 | 4.5% |
| NY | 54 | 53 | 3.2% |
| WA | 46 | 44 | 2.7% |
| OH | 45 | 45 | 2.7% |
| PA | 45 | 44 | 2.7% |
| NC | 44 | 44 | 2.6% |
| DE | 43 | 43 | 2.5% |
Show every exact FAA model label
| Model label | All registrations | Valid (status V) |
|---|---|---|
| 152 | 1,637 | 1,617 |
| A152 | 48 | 48 |
| CESSNA F152 | 1 | 1 |
| F152 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 1,687 | 1,667 |
The cheap airplane still wants a budget
After the purchase the airplane wants fuel, an engine fund, an annual inspection, insurance and somewhere to sleep. Only some of those have a published number worth printing.
Fuel
We have no published fuel burn for the 152 that we could verify against a maker or a dated specification table, so the calculator leaves fuel burn for you to fill in.
The engine
Lycoming's service instruction covers the O-235-L2C and the O-235-N2C. It allows 2,400 hours for the first run after factory-new or factory-rebuilt delivery, 2,400 hours after an overhaul and, separately, a limit of 12 calendar years. The instruction carries conditions, and the engine's history and configuration decide which line applies, so read it before relying on the headline. The engine is the line item that arrives all at once.
To turn that into a monthly reserve, divide your overhaul quote by the hours. We have not invented a quote for you. Overhaul prices swing with the shop, the engine's condition and what gets replaced.
The rest
The FAA describes an annual inspection interval of 12 calendar months for ordinary US personal aircraft ownership. Insurance, hangar or tie-down fees, labour rates and loan terms depend too much on the owner, the airfield and the airplane for one published number to mean anything, so this page prints none. Add your own quotes to the figures above and you have a budget that belongs to you. More on the wider costs of owning an aircraft sits in our ownership section.
Renting is the benchmark your own figure has to justify. Our guide to how much it costs to rent a Cessna 172 shows the other side of the ledger for a bigger airplane.
What the accident files record
Every entry in the NTSB files is a real event, and the counts are all this page claims to know about them. The NTSB lists 584 accidents involving 152-family aircraft from 2000 through 2025. Of those, 77, or 13.2%, were fatal, and 115 people died in them.
- 592000
- 2005
- 2010
- 2015
- 2020
- 112025
Counts only. The NTSB does not record how many hours the family flew, so these bars are not rates.
The count was highest in 2000, at 59, and stood at 11 in 2025. That is a drop in the number of accidents. It should not be read as a change in risk, because the data holds no flying hours to divide by, and the fleet itself has aged and shrunk.
The first coded phase is the one attached to the first event in the NTSB's sequence for each accident. Accidents without a coded sequence, or with unmapped codes, sit in separate rows of the full table.
Landing leads by a distance. 37.7% of accidents begin there, and takeoff adds 12.2%. Together that is 49.8% of the record, all of it at the two ends of a flight.
The NTSB's own findings point at people and machines together. Of the 237 accidents with causal findings in its current coding, 85.7% involve personnel issues and 74.7% involve aircraft issues. An accident can carry several findings, so the shares overlap and do not add up to the whole.
Show the NTSB tables
| Year | Accidents | Fatal accidents |
|---|---|---|
| 2000 | 59 | 12 |
| 2001 | 53 | 7 |
| 2002 | 41 | 5 |
| 2003 | 32 | 2 |
| 2004 | 22 | 0 |
| 2005 | 39 | 4 |
| 2006 | 25 | 1 |
| 2007 | 25 | 1 |
| 2008 | 24 | 3 |
| 2009 | 25 | 3 |
| 2010 | 19 | 1 |
| 2011 | 13 | 3 |
| 2012 | 14 | 3 |
| 2013 | 19 | 3 |
| 2014 | 8 | 2 |
| 2015 | 10 | 3 |
| 2016 | 27 | 1 |
| 2017 | 17 | 4 |
| 2018 | 19 | 4 |
| 2019 | 17 | 1 |
| 2020 | 12 | 2 |
| 2021 | 13 | 1 |
| 2022 | 17 | 5 |
| 2023 | 12 | 0 |
| 2024 | 11 | 3 |
| 2025 | 11 | 3 |
| Phase of flight | Accidents | Share of all accidents |
|---|---|---|
| Landing | 220 | 37.7% |
| Takeoff | 71 | 12.2% |
| Approach | 51 | 8.7% |
| Maneuvering | 51 | 8.7% |
| Cruise | 48 | 8.2% |
| Enroute | 47 | 8.0% |
| Initial Climb | 21 | 3.6% |
| Taxi | 17 | 2.9% |
| Prior to Flight | 12 | 2.1% |
| Standing | 8 | 1.4% |
| Go-around (VFR) | 7 | 1.2% |
| Climb | 6 | 1.0% |
| Emergency or uncontrolled descent | 2 | 0.3% |
| Other, unknown or not coded | 23 | 3.9% |
| Total | 584 | 100.0% |
| Group | Accidents | Share of all | Share of coded subset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aircraft | 177 | 30.3% | 74.7% |
| Personnel issues | 203 | 34.8% | 85.7% |
| Environmental issues | 48 | 8.2% | 20.3% |
| Organizational issues | 3 | 0.5% | 1.3% |
| Not determined | 14 | 2.4% | 5.9% |
| Group | Accidents | Share of all | Share of coded subset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aircraft/Environment | 134 | 22.9% | 46.2% |
| Human Performance | 271 | 46.4% | 93.4% |
| Direct Underlying Factors | 27 | 4.6% | 9.3% |
| Manufacture band | Accidents | Share of all |
|---|---|---|
| Year of manufacture 1977 to 2025 | 144 | 24.7% |
| Unknown year of manufacture | 440 | 75.3% |
| Family aircraft in different manufacture-year bands | 0 | 0.0% |
What to take from the numbers
- Ask about the airframe first. The median 152 in our sample has flown 18,589 hours. Corrosion, logbook gaps and what happened to the wings and spar matter more than the price.
- Expect a small, thin market. Our sample had 7 priced listings with a median ask of $62,000, and one airplane can move that number.
- Treat an asking price as an opening line. These are what sellers want. The sample cannot see what buyers pay.
- Ask for engine time since overhaul, not only airframe hours. Lycoming's interval counts engine hours: 2,400 hours after an overhaul.
- Do not read a valid registration as a clean bill of health. Status V is paperwork, not an inspection.
Questions buyers ask
How much does a new Cessna 152 cost?
Nothing, because it is out of production. The FAA data sheet gives the 152 one approval date, 1977. The used market is the only market.
How much does a used Cessna 152 cost?
In a one-day sample of asking prices on Controller.com, the median ask was $62,000, from $44,000 to $95,000, across 7 priced listings. Those are asking prices, not sales, and the sample is small.
How many Cessna 152 aircraft are there?
The FAA register lists 1,687 aircraft in the 152 family, 1,667 with a valid registration. Almost all carry the 152 label, with 1,637 records.
How many Cessna 152 accidents has the NTSB recorded?
The NTSB files hold 584 accidents from 2000 through 2025, 77 of them fatal. These are counts, not rates, because flying hours by model are not published.
What engine does the Cessna 152 have?
The FAA data sheet lists a 110 hp Lycoming, the O-235-L2C or the O-235-N2C. Lycoming allows 2,400 hours after an overhaul, under conditions.
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Sources and how the numbers were made
Data through: FAA 2026-10-12; NTSB 2026-09-30; asking sample 2026-10-14.
How the numbers were made: We counted matching FAA registrations and showed valid registrations (status V) separately. We combined the NTSB files, counted each accident once and excluded incidents. Used prices are summaries of advertised prices. Fuel cost examples multiply published fuel burn by example fuel prices.
Privacy: No personal data is used in the published results. No owner, seller, crew, operator, narrative or individual accident record is published.
- Federal Aviation Administration. Releasable Aircraft Database. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The registry supplies fleet counts by model, build year, registrant type and state.
Source SHA-256:ad4497553c4b71a14e7a0768b2e9c66974998ced50177a963b7942eabc259dec - Federal Aviation Administration. Aircraft Registration Database Description. Retrieved 2026-10-13. This document explains registration status and registrant-type codes.
- Federal Aviation Administration. Pilot Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge. Glossary. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The glossary explains the annual inspection interval.
Source SHA-256:210d7cebd33f4094af682b49cb83a93505bebfe3d22e7db4de25dbdaa5476140 - Lycoming Engines. Service Instruction No. 1009BF. Time Between Overhaul (TBO) Schedules. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The service instruction gives engine overhaul schedules and their conditions.
Source SHA-256:a0e8755d288166ac64fe198791c5f6e1616e51835ac3354e33b21d2ca9f40d9a - Lycoming Engines. O-235 and O-290 Series Operator Manual 60297-9. Retrieved 2026-10-14. The manual identifies engine applications used to check which overhaul schedule applies.
Source SHA-256:3a7fb56f7ca1a1d9759065f15364cd1db8385bd9f6d933f53013ed5e8e331326
Text SHA-256:72ec70a95bce4747675684e5c052d3b9b62628b802ae42d7ab34c29418cca13b - National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation accident data: avall. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The later accident file supplies counts, fatal outcomes, phases of flight, findings and manufacture years.
Source SHA-256:bc74fefb1b39e1b86700a4be82b8ff6014bb1f6d81008524de73f2ddbd38b052
Database SHA-256:c891b8a6fe55651294a0cb0fa328e5648833caf5ac62b1c21d6caf3ea5e99bb7 - National Transportation Safety Board. Historical aviation accident data: Pre2008. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The historical accident file supplies earlier counts and its own phase and finding categories.
Source SHA-256:89e2df6d848e7ab3b42e7d7c7a03ff403303057a26ca04c95b3ea67201c3ce74
Database SHA-256:c2102e7e9f6773ab25c5564904db9b02d0a6d58ad8e73b3e9accda349ea85b9a - National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation data dictionaries. Retrieved 2026-10-13. Each file's dictionary defines the accident codes used here.
- National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation data download directory. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The directory gives the accident files' release dates.
- National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation database release notes. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The release notes explain file coverage and how causes and contributing factors are marked.
- National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation accident database query help. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The help page explains event dates, first phases, investigation status and limits on foreign investigations.
- National Transportation Safety Board. Aviation accident database. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The database page explains the geographic limits of these accident records.
- Federal Aviation Administration. General Aviation and Part 135 Activity Survey. Retrieved 2026-10-13. The survey reports flight hours by aircraft category, which cannot support a model accident rate.
- Federal Aviation Administration. Type Certificate Data Sheet No. 3A19. Retrieved 2026-10-14. The FAA sheet supplies certified approval dates, engines, power, weights, fuel capacities and seating for the covered models.
Source SHA-256:6988f6a0346a0573e6cc0f3de9a66d7629e1a7f5ae07484b2c10338aceb4996a
Text SHA-256:13b1269699e06ca29ecc0315ac240a5664fcd8506be3c454b446e4c3192c8613 - Controller.com. Cessna 152 aircraft for sale. Retrieved 2026-10-14. The advertised prices supply model medians, ranges and airframe hours for the dated sample.
Send corrections and a supporting source through the contact page. We check each correction against the source.