The plane involved in Thursday’s accident is one of the safest and most popular in civil aviation.
The Cessna 172 is the best-selling aircraft of all time, and has been in production since the 1960s. It is known to be a simple and forgiving aircraft, making it the one most often used in the U.S. for flight instruction.
The Civil Air Patrol exclusively uses the Cessna 172 for its air search and rescue and emergency service mission because of its reliability, stability and good ground visibility.
Its safety record is slightly better than other aircraft in its class, and the more than 36,000 aircraft in the fleet have accumulated millions of flight hours.
Instructional flying is proportionately much safer than personal flying, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Instructional flying is usually done under the best weather conditions and only under the supervision of a licensed flying instruction.
Pilot error is the primary cause of about 85 percent of Cessna 172 accidents. Mechanical problems are the source of less than 7 percent of accidents in the craft, according to the AOPA.
Large commercial aircraft have the lowest crash rates and are about 50 times safer per million flight hours than general aviation.
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