The aircraft's structure is mostly aluminum with a fiberglass cowling. Cessna LSA Project head Neal Willford indicated in August 2006 that Cessna was investigating the use of "match hole drilling" to reduce costs and simplify construction of the design. This technique is widely used in the kit-plane industry and in construction of larger aircraft, but would be Cessna's first use in its single-engine line. On 9 October 2007 Cessna announced that a Ballistic Recovery Systems airframe ballistic parachute system would be a factory-installed option on the Cessna 162.