Why icon A5 is failing
INTRODUCTION This is the Icon A5,
designed and manufactured by Icon Aircraft, a US-based sports aircraft manufacturer.
The aircraft is known for having brought significant excitement and publicity to
the LSA industry since its unveiling in 2008, although the company’s legal and financial issues
have slowed its production. ICON Aircraft positions the A5 with a recreational focus,
stating that the aircraft competes with power sports vehicles
such as ATVs, motorcycles, watercraft, and snowmobiles, rather than other airplanes.
The A5 is the only light aircraft in production to be certified to FAA Part 23 standards.
DESIGN/EXTERIOR
The A5 is a high-wing amphibious monoplane, with a lightweight, high-strength carbon fiber airframe
and a sleek exterior designed by ex-Nissan designer Randy Rodriguez. The innovative
design includes folding wings with a wingspan of 34.8 feet that can be opened by a single
person in just two minutes. This feature, along with the size of the aircraft – at
23ft in length and 8.1ft high – reduce the space required to park or store the plane,
unlike other conventional light aircraft, and the A5 can even be stored in a standard home garage.
The A5 sport plane features a boat-hull design for amphibious operation.
It’s hard to argue with the A5’s good looks. Lean and angular as a hawk, it looks like a marriage
between a Piper M-class and a Jet Ski, with a little bit of sports car ingredients thrown in.
The engine is mounted in a housing over the fuselage and to the rear of the cockpit,
resulting in the tail stem being low mounted and made part of the fuselage’s boat-like hull. Its
integral headlights provide enough lighting for ground, sea, or air cruising, and a propeller
guard is fitted for improved safety. It uses LEDs for all its exterior lighting,
which not only consume less energy and generate less heat, but are lightweight, exceptionally
bright, and allow very sharply defined beams. The A5 features a tricycle retractable landing gear
that can be optionally excluded to convert the amphibious sport aircraft into a pure seaplane.
The A5 features Sea wings platforms along the side of the fuselage that provide lateral stability,
as well as allow pilots to stand during docking of the seaplane in water.
It is also the first spin-resistant light sport aircraft in the world.
This isn’t down to any specific feature, but rather a combination of design elements.
For example, the outsized, foldable wings have stall-resistant wing cuffs, and there’s
a slight twist in the plane’s carbon-fiber contours and innovatively designed airfoils.
The bigger wings called for a larger tail, which in turn required a stronger tail boom.
The result was a larger and heavier airframe, with a maximum gross weight of 1,510lbs.
A whole-airframe Ballistic Recovery Systems parachute is optional,
except for U.S.-registered A5’s where it is mandatory,
due to ICON's exemption from the U.S. light-sport aircraft weight limit.
INTERIOR The ergonomically designed cockpit
of the A5 features simple, grouped controls, a GPS system, and reclined seating for two. The
cockpit is designed akin to that of a sports car by BMW designers and offers side-by-side seating
for two in a contoured style with waterproof seats reclined to 25°. The 46-inch internal
width allows comfortable seating for the riders and features removable side windows which can be
easily removed and stowed in the baggage areas to provide an immersive open-air flying experience.
The bubble-glass canopy wrapped around the cockpit offers high visibility and panoramic views, while
the forward opening canopy allows easy access to the cockpit from water or ground. Inspired by
military aircraft, the A5 uses a center stick to control the ailerons and elevator. This intuitive
interface provides direct feedback to the pilot, in keeping with the A5’s sport flying mission.
The cockpit also features an MP3 music port, a VHF communication radio, and numerous
storage compartments. The recreational plane carries up to 60lb of baggage.
ENGINE
Among the most widely used light aircraft engines, the Rotax 912 is reliable, lightweight, and
efficient. The A5 is powered by a single 100 hp Rotax 912iS Sport engine, driving a three-bladed
propeller in a pusher configuration. The engine was developed in collaboration with Icon Aircraft
to allow a seamless integration into the A5. It can run on aviation fuel and automotive gasoline
and offers improved fuel efficiency over carbureted engines, due to its electronic
fuel injection system. The time between overhaul of the engine is 2,000 hours.
AVIONICS
The A5 is available with the removable Garmin Aera 796 GPS or the Garmin G3X Touch flight display.
These touch screen displays have customizable display modes, 3D terrain views, moving maps with
sectional markings, secondary instrument clusters, and flight planning systems.
ADS-B OUT comes standard, and ADS-B IN is also available as an option.
The standard avionics configuration on the A5 is the Garmin aera 796 portable GPS suite, which is
integrated at the top of the center stack of the aircraft. The Garmin aera 796 features a 7-inch
sunlight-readable touch screen interface that offers 3D views of terrain, airport diagrams,
weather information, and sectional charts for Visual Flight Rules compliant flights.
The state-of-the-art interface from Garmin, the G3X Touch display with an
optional 2-axis autopilot, adds situational awareness and sophistication to the ICON A5.
The autopilot system includes the Garmin GMC 507 control panel, which provides a dedicated
interface and allows the pilot to control the advanced features offered by Garmin, including
autopilot modes such as IAS Hold, Vertical Speed Hold, Altitude, Heading, and Track modes.
PERFORMANCE The A5 has the excellent qualities of a low
and slow light class touring aircraft with the on-water capabilities of a full-fledged seaplane.
This is made largely possible by the A5’s boat-like hull design,
which, coupled with its high wing mounting, ensures excellent lift and drag balance as
well as short field capability with a takeoff run of just 640 feet from land and 840 feet on water.
The A5 has a maximum speed of 95 knots, not bad for a seaplane powered by a 100-horsepower
Rotax engine, and a maximum take-off weight of 1510-lbs. with a useful load of 430-lbs.
It runs on 91 octane car fuel or 100LL aviation fuel, and the fuel tank can store 20gal. It has
a range of 491 miles with 45 minutes of reserve. The A5 has room to fit up to 60 lbs of baggage
and has a Landing Distance of 590 feet on the runway and 700 feet on water.
The American amphibious aircraft is not meant for transportation or to go far. It was not
built with speed, range, or payload in mind: 109mph is as racy as it gets. But what the A5
lacks in distance and speed, it more than makes up for in innovation. It is strictly
designed to be the ultimate flying toy — a personal watercraft with wings.
The ICON A5 also has a feature that keeps it airborne and controllable, even when the pilot has
inadvertently stalled it. Typically, most aircraft held in a stall, even at full power, go into
a rapid descent that can degrade into a loss of control or a spin; but the A5 is designed to float
in midair indefinitely, so long as the engine doesn’t overheat. Unlike most private airplanes,
the built-in pontoons let you take it onto small lakes, opening up a lot more places to use it.
It is suitable for taking off and landing on paved, grass, dirt, and gravel surfaces.
It can be optionally fitted with a parachute that lands the plane in case of emergency.
MARKET Speaking of market performance,
coverage in the mainstream media showed that there was significant interest from outside
the aviation community, and ICON has reported that 35% of its customers are not pilots.
PROS The ICON A5 is a next-generation,
light sport aircraft that has been described as a sports car with wings,
which maneuvers like a jet ski – and because it’s easy to store and transport over land,
you’re always ready for the next adventure. The ready-to-fly aircraft has been designed to be so
intuitive that even a novice can learn to handle it in under 30 hours. It requires the pilot to
have only a sports pilot license, so you don't need a full private pilot license to fly the A5.
It is simple, easy to fly, lightweight has low operating costs, and has numerous safety features.
Two key engineering innovations of the A5 mitigate the risks.
One is an easy-to-read Angle of Attack gauge to help pilots avoid loss-of-control stalls
and the second innovation is a Spin-Resistant Airframe, the first to meet the full FAA Part
23 standards for spin resistance. Then there is a whole airframe parachute safety system.
CONS
The original vision of transforming general aviation by creating a much more accessible,
entry-level aircraft that would appeal to pilots and non-pilots alike, which was once a key feature
of the company’s pitch, appeared to have gone by the boards. Icon Aircraft, which burst on
the scene with the promise of a cute little Sport Plane with delightful amphibious capabilities and
low-cost innovation, for less than $140K, had morphed into a litany of broken promises,
all manner of marketing hype and misdirection, severely limited availability
and a price that was two to almost three times what was originally envisioned.
Moreover, the aircraft met several accidents, including one that killed
two members of its own company in a manner that mimicked much of the radical, wild,
flying promoted in their promotional videos and shown off by a number of their demo pilots.
Icon Aircraft informed customers in 2017 who had placed a deposit on the A5 that
the price for the aircraft to be delivered in 2018 had increased 50 percent, to $389,000,
for a "fully loaded" version that includes retractable landing gear, among other features
that will be absent from the $269,000 base model. Those prices were up from $257K and $207K,
respectively, a 30% increase for the base model and more than 50% for the fully-equipped model.
Evidence of what may be a tenuous financial position for the company was indicated with
Icon’s pronouncement that all of the 2018 aircraft scheduled for production would consist
of the costly "Fully Loaded" versions and base models will not be delivered until 2019 at the
earliest. Moreover, the company had a backlog of orders and was plagued by production delays.
In April 2016, the ICON A5 purchaser's agreement was made public and was widely criticized for
containing many controversial elements not usually found in aircraft purchase agreements.
These included contractually required pilot training, maintenance, agreements not to sue, the
requirement for factory airframe overhauls every 2,000 hours or ten years (whichever comes first),
and a limit on the aircraft's life of 6,000 hours, or thirty years. Furthermore, each aircraft would
be equipped with a camera and recorder to monitor pilot behavior that is owned by the manufacturer
but must be maintained by the owner. Owners would have to agree to be "supportive" of the company,
and future owners were required to sign the same agreement or face penalties.
A general consensus is that Icon was a program with a poor future,
that it had been extensively mismanaged, and that the company had been less than honest
throughout the last decade, often resorting to grandiose claims and aggressive PR
to make the company appear more capable than it has proven to be.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, it is built to be safe and easy to fly, with an interior that looks remarkably like
the inside of a modern car, the ICON A5 is truly an iconic aircraft. It gives access to the land,
water, and sky in an ergonomic, intuitive, and beautiful design. The A5 reinvents
recreational aviation and lets you bring the exhilaration of flight to life like never before.