Carenado has teased their next aircraft for Microsoft Flight Simulator, and it’s one with a very special place in aviation history. The developer dropped an image on Facebook today showing what appears to be the first-ever Cessna 172, simply designated “172”, before the Skyhawk name and letter suffixes became standard.
The teaser image shows the aircraft flying over farmland at sunset, with the branding “Carenado 172 Oneseventytwo” stamped across. While Carenado has yet to share any details about release timing or features, the visuals suggest we’re looking at a recreation of the 1956 Cessna 172, the original tricycle-gear design that launched the Skyhawk family.
The original 172 was introduced in 1956 as a development of the Cessna 170B, which Carenado also released for MSFS back in 2021. By swapping the taildragger configuration of the 170B for a nosewheel and making small design refinements, Cessna created what would become the most-produced aircraft in the world.
Early 172s are easy to distinguish from later Skyhawks due to their straight vertical tail.
As always, Carenado hasn’t revealed pricing or availability just yet. But given their track record, we can expect the aircraft to appear on the MSFS Marketplace in the not-too-distant future.
For now, it looks like simmers will soon have the chance to fly the Cessna 172 where it all began: the very first model that started a legacy of more than 45,000 aircraft built worldwide.
