Piper Pa-18

Single Piston

The Piper PA-18 Super Cub is the definitive American bush plane, a rugged taildragger that has been hauling hunters, surveyors, and backcountry adventurers into impossible places since 1949. Built as a beefed-up successor to the legendary J-3 Cub, the Super Cub added a more powerful engine (typically 150 hp), flaps, and a strengthened airframe capable of operating from sandbars, tundra, and mountain ridges where most aircraft fear to tread. Its slow-flight manners are legendary—stall speed below 40 knots with flaps, a climb rate that embarrasses many twins, and short-field performance that turns football fields into runways. Fitted with oversized tundra tires or floats, the Super Cub became the workhorse of Alaska and Canada's remote regions, where it remains irreplaceable for accessing hunting camps, fire towers, and mining sites beyond the reach of roads. Though production ended in 1994 after more than 10,000 were built, the design lives on through CubCrafters and other manufacturers building modernized variants, and the used market remains robust—a testament to a 75-year-old design that still does things no modern aircraft can match. The Super Cub's reputation for reliability in punishing conditions, combined with its ability to land and take off in distances shorter than its own wingspan, has made it the gold standard for backcountry aviation. SkyMeter has tracked 1 flights across 1 airframes and 1 operators, with Darren Dean Reck the largest observed operator.