Colomban Cri-Cri, a smallest twin-engined aircraft

This is plane called Cri-Cri

History of the most famous French plane called Cri-Cri

The whole story of Cri-Cri airplane, the world's smallest twin-engined aircraft, begun in 1971, when CriCri's aircraft designer Michel Colomban set his goal to build a very small and economical plane powered by two little engines, that would be capable of flying even some aerobatics. They say, that he also wanted not to exceed his budget over 1000 USD including two engines, which was quite hard to believe even in early 70s :-)
Constructional time took around 1500 working hours, spread to couple of years. The plane became reality in 1973 and was given a name after Michel Comomban's daughter, who was also often called 'Cri-Cri'.

Cri-Cri's maiden flight was performed by test pilot Robert Buisson. It took place at 'Guyancourt Airport' on 19th July 1973, just stone's throw from Paris. After some pre-flight landing gear tests, Michel with Robert decided to change CriCri's current two-wheeled gear to more safe three-wheeled gear. Later on, everything was prepared for take-off. Robert gave it some gas and the aircraft smoothly accelerated to 100 km/hour just within eight seconds and took wing above runway...

Is it ultralight or aerobatic plane?

Nowadays it's been more than thirty years, since Cri-Cri had it's first flight, but CriCri's legend is still living, and I think, it will be living for many future years, because construction of this plane is extremely dateless.
On whole world is now registered more than one hundred-fifty Cri-Cries in many construction versions, with different engines, etc. Majority of them flies in their native country (France). It's over 110 planes, the second country is the USA with over twenty registered planes. The United Kingdom, Germany and Canada is following.
Unfortunately, there is no sign about this georgeous ultralight homebuilt plane in the middle or Eastern Europe, so probably everyone who built it would become the very first owner in this part of the world, where I came from.
Many people are in love to this plane mainly because of its fantastic combination of 'ultralight plane' dimensions and high performances. What is really seriously interesting is that it is real to fly an aerobatics with the Cri-Cri, which you can watch in our Cri-Cri video gallery.