Cessna 150-152 Club • FAQ's: Serial Number Trivia

Cessna 150-152 Production Trivia
According to Cessna’s official production count, there were exactly 31,533 Cessna 150-152’s manufactured. Of this total:

22,138 C150’s were built in the US (21,404 regular flavor, 734 Aerobats)

6,943 C152’s were built in the US (6,628 regular flavor, 315 Aerobats)

2,405 airplanes were built by Reims Aviation under Cessna license in France, of those:

1,764 were C150’s (1,428 regular flavor, and 336 Aerobats, of which 216 were equipped with Rolls Royce/Continental 130 HP 0-240-A engines)

There were 641 C152’s built in France (552 regular flavor, and 89 Aerobats)

And interestingly, 47 airplanes were assembled by a Reims affiliate in Argentina. (38 regular flavor, 9 Aerobats)

What happened to the 142?
In keeping with their conventional vs. tri gear naming convention, Cessna planned to name the tri gear update of the 140 the 142. The protype, serial# 617, was licensed for flight on October 10, 1957. Six days later, for reasons since lost to history, Cessna renamed the 142 the Cessna 150. The protype remained in service with Cessna as a test aircraft until November 21, 1960, after which registration was cancelled and the aircraft dismantled.

The First 150’s: Production of aircraft for sale began in late 1957, and continued through 1959. All 683 of the first run of production aircraft were sold as 1959 models.

Serial Confusion
Cessna was madly inconsistent with serial number designations. The first production airplane was ser# 17001 and they stuck with this format until the 999 ^th 150. Then Cessna realized that the next airplane would be ser# 18000. According to some observers, there was concern that there may be parts ordering confusion between the model 150 and 180, so the next available five digit serial sequence was substituted partway through the 1960 model year. This happened to be ser# 59001. Only the last 18 of the 1960 models were given this orphaned 590XX serial designation.

20/20 Hindsight
It would have made more sense to make the model year change at the end of Ser# 17999. Cessna apparently did put some thought into this quandary at the end of the 1960 model run and decided to add a “150” prefix to the 1961 model serial numbers. Unfortunately for us, they neglected to add a dash after the model number. Later expansion and contraction of the number of digits would cause considerable confusion. Cessna must have assumed that production would never total more than 99,999 units, but even so, as they had already jumped forward from 17999 to 59001, there were now just 40,981 serial numbers available in the new series. That probably seemed like no limitation at the time, but only the litigious 1980’s stopped Cessna from running out of digits and having to choose yet another way to count serial#’s. A simple “-” after the model number would have eliminated this limitation. Even Cessna came to realize this eventually. When they began production in France, the first serial# contained a dash, F150-0001. Four years later, defying logic, the “-” was replaced by an extra zero, guaranteeing overseas serial confusion.

Those Doggone Owners...
About 2-3 percent of owners of US made 150-152’s are convinced that Cessna really “should” have put a dash in there, and register their planes as such. Whether or not the dash makes it onto the final paper work seems to be at the whim of whomever typed up the certificate. For humans this is no big deal, but computers see Ser# 15059019 and Ser# 150-59019 as two different airplanes. This means lots of clerical errors in the FAA registration database.

For the Record : No US built Cessna 150 or 152 has a dash anywhere in the serial number, not even Aerobats.

Model Designations: Not much better.
With the exception of the Aerobat , (a masterful moniker in our opinion.) Cessna never bothered giving the Model 150 a “Real” name. While other Cessna's got to be Skyhawks , Skywagons , SkyLanes , SkyMasters , Centurions , and Cardinals , the closest Cessna came to naming the 150 was by designating the loaded version “The Commuter.” Because Commuter really referred to a trim and avionics package, the model name is of little significance today (most airplanes have been upgraded way past to “Commuter” avionics status.) For the 152, Cessna dropped the Commuter designation, and called the premium version of the airplane the 152II (Roman numeral two) giving us the awkwardly redundant One Fifty Two Two. Like the commuter, the 152II's advantages have become irrelevant over time, their upgraded avionics are now irrelevant, most have been changed out to keep up with the times.

Unfortunately, Cessna failed to make even the numerical model designations logical. The first two model years were simply 150’s and then in year three, 1961, the airplane got a letterman’s jacket and became the 150A, the following year the 150B, and so forth until 1969 when it by all rights should have been the 150I. Cessna then decided to skip a letter (possibly fearing that the 150I might look like a “1501” from a distance.) Of course this change meant we no longer would be able to simply do the alphabet song in our heads to figure out a plane’s model year.

But Cessna wasn’t done playing model name games yet. Two years later, when the 1971 150L was supposed to turn into the 1972 150M, Cessna decided that they hadn’t really changed the airplane all that much from the year before, so why not just keep the “L”? And so they did, for three years. The airplane must have changed enough in their minds by that point (or else the sales guys needed a new model) because they finally moved one letter forward to the 150M in 1975, sticking with that letter until the 152 was introduced in 1978. Then, they decided to drop the letter designations all together, making it virtually impossible to tell the model year of a 152 without seeing the paperwork.

If we had a time machine and Cessna’s ear in 1959…
All the airplanes would have had a alphabetic extension from day one, 1959-150A, 1960-150B, etc. The 150I thing wouldn’t have been a problem either, just make it lower case “150i” and beat the iMac to cool by 40 years. ( Hey, this time machine thing is neato!) Keep the letter designators in the serial number too, and add a dash, that way you can always figure out an airplane’s model year whether you see the serial number or even just the model name. While we’re at it, why not number them in the order they came off the line that year? That way when you see SN#150i-00839 you can use the alphabet song and in just a moment you’d know you were looking at the 839 ^th 1967 150 built. Pretty handy, No? And, let’s call em SkySparrows . (Goes nice with the future SparrowHawk upgrade.)

Times of Feast
The biggest production run of 150’s was for the 1966 model year when 3,067 were built. That was also the first model year in France, though Reims doesn’t get much credit, contributing only 67 airplanes to the tidy 3,000 built in the US. Industry pundits credit the new swept back tail introduced that year and renewed marketing efforts by Cessna to the burst of sales. By way of comparison, more 1966 150’s were built than in the previous six years combined. The winning streak held up pretty well, from 1966 to 1969 production averaged 2,531 units a year. By 1970 orders declined and Cessna built just 1,311 C150’s worldwide. Sadly, C150 annual production would never cross the 2,000 plateau again. C152's production was the highest during 1978 (the first model year)  2,812. Each year production of the 152 declined, until the last model year (1986) when only 25 were produced (all in France, US production stopped in 1985, with 116 airplanes produced.)

…and Famine
The Fewest 150’s were produced for 1961 when only 332 were made, this was only 2 airplanes fewer than the 1960 model year, and 18 less than the 1962 model year. It took a full four years for production to pass the 1,000 mark, and when it did, it did so dramatically, more than tripling in a single year from 760 in 1965 to the aforementioned 3,067 in 1966. Say what you will about the slant tail and power flaps, in the mid 1960’s they provided a huge sales breakthrough for Cessna.

A is for Aerobat…
With a few structural beef ups, Cessna had a sales winner, although clearly in a niche market. Still, Aerobats were just right for the job intended, and sought after by flight schools and recreational flyers to this day. Because production of the Aerobat was quite limited (only 1,483 airplanes total built world wide) their values have increased even more than other 150-152’s often bringing a $5,000-$8,000 premium for that extra “A”.

Are two A’s better? (aka, more dash confusion)
When a Reims affiliate in Argentina began assembling 150’s in 1972, they were given the logical “A” prefix, just as French built 150’s were labeled F150. But now we had the problem of non Aerobats being labeled as A150’s, and so a dash was inserted, making the Argentine airplanes “A-150’s”. Ah, but the plot thickens. When nine Aerobats were assembled in Argentina, they were saddled with the awkward designation “A-A150”

More Franglais
Just as the Reims built 150’s were designated F150, it follows logically that the Reims Aerobats were labeled FA150. Then in 1972, Reims began building Aerobats with a Rolls Royce licensed 0-240-A (130 HP, Yipee!) engines. The model designation? “FRA150” or in English as she is spoken, “French Rolls Aerobat.” Since 1972 was also the year that Reims began production in Argentina, so I suppose we should be thankful (linguistically speaking) there were no A-RA150’s.

No Letterman's Jacket for the 152.
Cessna fixed plenty in the 152, widened the cabin, increased the power, gross weight, and useable fuel. Unfortunately, the market was already slowing down and the price of the new model higher than ever. Cessna had optimistically built 2,811 of the first year 152’s, but sales were sluggish, the following year they built 1,000 fewer. Within two years production was below 1,000 units a year world wide.

Most Rare:
Only two A152 Aerobats were built world wide in 1984, (both in the US) making them the most rare of all Cessna 150-152’s. Serial Number A1521026, registration N758ZB was exported to South Africa in 1992, where it is now registered as ZS-NFD. Serial Number A1521026, registration N758ZC, is registered in Florida.

Runner Ups:
There were just three of those awkwardly named A-A150L 1973 Aerobats built in Argentina, current status unknown (by us anyway.) Then for the 1981 through 1983 model years, Reims built just five 152 Aerobats a year. Next on the list of Rarities are the six 1972 A-A150L Aerobats assembled in Argentina (also status unknown).

Odd Man Out:
One airplane is completely unique, it started out as a 1973 150L, serial number 15075681. Cessna retained the airplane and used it for development. In the late 1970's Cessna used this airframe to develop the changes for the 152, and eventually recertified the airplane as a 1978 Cessna 152 II. But, they weren't done yet. Next Cessna modified the airplane with all the structural beef ups required for the A152 Aerobat, and the airplane was again recertified as a 1978 A152 Aerobat. This process created some unique paperwork for the airplane, since all of the changes were performed by the manufacturer, no STC's were required, but simple log notations that the changes conform to Cessna engineering drawing #'s. In a very real sense this airplane, originally born as a 1973 150, is the single parent to both the 152 and 152 Aerobat. The airplane is now in private ownership, registered in Kentucky as N7187C.

What we know...
Of the 31,533 airplanes produced, the club has so far been able to account for 23,827 still registered somewhere in the world. This is on ongoing project, with some serious research involved. Here’s a list of the countries that currently have 150-152 registrations:

Argentina, Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Canada, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Christmas Islands, Colombia, Congo, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Ethiopia, Finland, France, Gabon, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Ivory Coast, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mauritius, Monaco, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Portugal, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, St. Lucia, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, United Kingdom, United States, and last but not least…Yugoslavia. Whew!

And what we don’t...

What makes the job of accounting for these airplanes so tough is the lack of standardized data. Each and every country has set up their own registration system, and some of the systems are quite arcane. Then there’s the problem of Cessna’s ever changing serial# schemes. Some countries only track the last 5-8 digits of the serial numbers, resulting in numerous non resolvable duplicates in our records. Then there are the ubiquitous typographical errors. For example, the FAA, with the most total airplanes in its database (over 18,000) , has more than a dozen typographical errors that prevent us from verifying the aircraft in question. The NTSB recently criticized the FAA because more than 28,000 registration records contain significant errors.

Out of the 23, 827 registrations we’ve found worldwide, nearly 700 are either duplicates, or contain typographical errors in the serial# than make verification impossible at this point. We’ll eventually integrate the NTSB accident and FAA incident reports, and just maybe someday, we’ll know either the location of fate of at least 95% of those 31,533 airplanes built.