Cessna 172 Skyhawk — the most-built wing in aviation

More 172s have been built than any other aircraft, which makes this the wing the largest number of pilots have actually flown behind. It is also about as plain as a wing gets: 11.00 m span, 174 ft² (16.2 m²), NACA 2412, no sweep, a little dihedral, and washout toward the tip.

Why it is shaped the way it is

The interesting choice is the 3° of washout. A 2412 is a well-mannered section, but a wing that stalls at the root first keeps the ailerons flying after the inboard wing has let go — which is the difference between a stall that mushes and one that drops a wing. Washout buys that at a small cruise-drag cost, and on a trainer that trade is obviously correct.

The 2412 itself is the other half: 2% camber at 40% chord, 12% thick. Enough camber to carry weight at low speed, thick enough for a spar and a fuel tank, and utterly predictable.

Where this model simplifies

The real 172 wing is semi-tapered — constant chord inboard, taper outboard. This tool draws one taper across the whole half-span, so root and tip chords here are chosen to match the published span and area rather than to match a station-by-station drawing.

This is a fit to published dimensions, not a replica. foil.tools draws a single-taper planform shaped by four splines; the real wing has structure this model does not carry. Span, area and section match the published figures — the metrics above are what this geometry actually produces, so where they differ from a published number, the difference is the fit.

Sources: Cessna 172S POH · flugzeuginfo.net technical data

The polars above are foil.tools' own analysis of this model, not published performance data for the aircraft. They are AeroBuildup — strip theory with NeuralFoil sections — for the wing alone, so they exclude the fuselage, the undercarriage and everything else that makes a real aeroplane slower than its wing. Read them for how this shape behaves, and for comparison against the other wings here — not as a figure for the aircraft. Open it in the designer and run your own.