Bellanca Cruisair

The Bellanca Cruisair was a family of single-engined light aircraft built in the United States from the middle of the 1930s onward. Giuseppe Bellanca designed the first of them, the 14-7 Junior, as a modern low-wing cantilever monoplane for the three and four seat market, a smaller niche than the six to eight seat cabin aircraft that had made the company known. The production 14-9 was the first American light aircraft built in numbers with retractable undercarriage, with roughly fifty made before the Second World War halted production. After the war the 14-13 Cruisair Senior returned with a larger cabin and a Franklin flat-six engine, and its oval tailplane end plates earned it the nickname Cardboard Constellation. Later members included the 14-19 Cruisemaster and, from the 1960s, the Viking series with a single swept fin. Bellanca named models by wing area and horsepower. Production passed through Bellanca, Northern Aircraft, Downer, Inter-Air and others, and the type is still regarded as a classic cabin monoplane.