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.