Well... I've never been kind enough to a model for it to last several years. My average plane survives 6 months now... Used to be they survived an average of 3 flights

This Triplane has survived appx 30 months. It is being retired now. I just inspected it and there's signs of excessive stress everywhere. (it would be easier to build another than repair this one properly.)

I know of one regularly flown model that is is on its 6th or 7th owner and is over 15 years old. Its condition is amazingly good... but it has had to be recovered at least twice in that time. This plane is still getting flown an average of 3 weekends each month.

I have seen models that were over 50 years old and were still flyable... (FF models mostly that old... a couple of CL models) still on the original covering.

I have seen a couple of over 60+ year old FF models that were converted to R/C sometime in the 1980's and are still flying as far as I know.