You list is a bit subjective and based on what as a standard of reliability? I work on 737-800's and A320's. I would say they are reliable, but then I have never waited 5 hours in a departure lounge waiting for one to be fixed.

Matt

Depends on so many things.  Maintenance hours versus flight hours, accidents attributable to inflight failures, AD's issued and longevity in operation.  Little J3 cub and its descendants look pretty strong.

Hughes 500D. 33+ years.

expat wrote on Oct 27^th, 2009 at 3:20pm:


I knew Matt would answer this one!

I have to say, just because and aeroplane has been in service for 40 to 50 years, doesn't make it reliable! The RAF's VC10s are over 40 years old (bar one, which is only 39 and 3/4), and reasonably often are deemed unservicable. Having said that, they have a few of them, so in some ways can be more selective about how and what will make them "broken". Also there are occasions when certain unservicabilities preclude you from doing certain things (bit of a teaser - for example you might find that 2 of your 6 - VHF,UHF and HF - radios are broken, and because of that, you can't do your task on one day, but the next, with the same problem, you can)

Really it all depends on the standards of the operator.

Frequent Flyer wrote on Nov 13^th, 2009 at 9:12am:

I've heard that the Cub brakes aren't all that effective .
Reliability will depend a lot on the engine & ease of maintenance. Not sure you can judge that in FS.

From the amount I see flying around here every day in the hands of student pilots I would say the Cessna 150/152 must be a candidate.

olderndirt wrote on Nov 13^th, 2009 at 11:36am:

Old fogies like me have a built-in spell checker. This makes typos stand out like a sore thumb. However, a spell checker wouldn't have helped in this case.