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Can You Take to the Sky?, by Greg G.
Airplanes
Aircraft are expensive, fragile, very dependent on the weather and, unfortunately, on other people such as Air Traffic Control and airport operators. Airports can be blocked, aircraft can be seized and it only takes a pea shooter to put them out of commission.
Given all that, they are still by far the best devices to quickly put hundreds of miles between you and a problem.
If you wanted an airplane as a survival tool, you would be looking at something simple that relies on the least possible support and can operate outside of airports: a bush plane. A bush plane is the equivalent of a four wheel drive car, with high wings and long legs to keep the body and propeller away from an uneven runway and a short take-off and landing distance. In that category, the Cessna 172 is the most available and easiest to fly aircraft. It is a four seater that will take you and your family halfway across the country in a day. A 40 years old model is still perfectly serviceable and costs under $50,000. However, you will need to count on a minimum of $5,000 a year in maintenance and running costs (constant compulsory maintenance is why old airplanes remain in good condition) and a serious investment in time.
Similar aircraft start with the Piper Cub, a seventy years old classic which is probably the cheapest airplane you can find but is mostly made of tubes covered in fabric and go up to the De Havilland Twin Otter, an absolute master of the genre (the main support plane in Antarctica) but much too large and expensive for anything other than commercial operations. I must absolutely mention the Cessna Caravan and the Pilatus Porter as top of the heap although they are also too large and expensive for our purpose. Back in the “vaguely reasonable” range, you’ll find the De Havilland Beaver ($300,000), the most famous airplane on floats, ubiquitous in Canada and Alaska and the much more affordable ($100,000) family of Maule 7 light aircraft (the Maule MX-7 on Tundra tires looks like a monster truck and will land anywhere!).
People use all those planes on water, dirt, grass and snow in inhospitable country around the world every day. They are slow, but usually have a superb range. The aforementioned C172 will take you at 140 mph for more than 800 statute miles away from your troubles before having to be refueled. Almost 45,000 have been made since 1956 so every mechanic in the world will know how to fix it and will have parts for it. Those planes are able to take off in less than 250 yards, but if you are considering converting one of your fields into a runway, count on double that to be comfortable and triple to be safe.
If you just want to get a license, it takes only between 40 and 50 hours of flying, a serious health check, a bit of classroom tuition, one ground exam, a flight test and a budget of around $6,000. Even if you don’t own an airplane, having the ability to fly one is a serious asset, especially if you consider living in a post cataclysmic world.
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