what is it?
The Caproni Ca.97 was a utility monoplane aircraft designed and produced by the Italian aircraft manufacturer Caproni. It had a range of powerplant arrangements, the aircraft could be flown with many as three radial engines, however, many were built with only the nose engine present or with only the two nacelle-mounted engines. The Ca.97 was originally designed during the latter half of the 1920s as a high-wing braced trimotor monoplane of conventional configuration with one engine mounted on the nose and the other two carried on strut-mounted nacelles at the fuselage sides.
How to recognise it: 1 piston engine with propeller · 16 m wingspan
base stats
Bars compare against all aircraft: 3,500 km/h, 20,000 km, 850 seats; size and number built on a log scale up to 640 t (An-225) and 45,000 built (Cessna 172).
fun facts
- First flew 99 years ago, in 1927.
- Top speed is 1.8× a car on the Dutch motorway (130 km/h).
- Wingspan of 16 m: about 4 cars parked nose to tail.
- Range of 1,000 km: 6× Amsterdam to Brussels.
piston: A car-like piston engine turning a propeller: simple and cheap, the classic small plane.
spec sheet
- first flight
- 1927
- number built
- 13
- role
- utility aircraft
- makers
- Caproni
- engines
- 1× Alfa Romeo Jupiter VIII Ri / Alfa Romeo Jupiter
- crew
- 1
- length
- 11.4 m
- wingspan
- 16 m
- height
- 3.5 m
- max take-off weight
- 2,650 kg
- top speed
- 230 km/h
- range
- 1,000 km
- ceiling
- 5,750 m
- wings
- monoplane
Specs are for the version in the Wikipedia article's specification section. Blank means the sources don't say.
Sources: Wikidata Q744874, Wikipedia: Caproni Ca.97 (CC BY-SA 4.0).Updated 2026-10-24.