Piaggio P.149

The Piaggio P.149 is an Italian utility and liaison aircraft of the 1950s, designed and built by Piaggio. It was developed as a four-seat touring variant of the earlier two-seat P.148, and is an all-metal low-wing cantilever monoplane with retractable tricycle landing gear and room for four or five occupants. The prototype first flew on 19 June 1953. Few were sold until the German Air Force chose it for a training and utility role: Piaggio delivered 76 of the 88 built in Italy to Germany, and another 190 were built under licence in Germany by Focke-Wulf as the FWP.149D. The German Air Force flew it between 1957 and 1990, and the Swissair flying school at Bern used a small fleet for primary instruction.