Icon A5

boscomantico wrote:

Flying will never be easy, even if the airplane only has a joystick, a PFD and 5 switches.

Ah I’d say fair-weather VFR just-for-fun flying is not that hard – so if the Icon is mostly used like a Jet Ski or a fun yacht (which you won’t put in the water in heavy rain and with an approaching storm), it might be a good overall match of capabilities, usage patterns, pilot skills and overall safety.

You need a couple of boxes ticked of course:

• The engine is just that, an engine, like one of these in your car. No need to read books on how to best operate it or even start it properly, no need to fiddle with three knobs where you just want to go faster, no need to send oils samples to some laboratory every 50 hours. The rotax and the setup in the A5 go a long way towards that.
• No hidden surprises in the flight envelope, especially not in areas that you’re likely to end up in. I don’t know what the aerodynamic sacrifice is of making the A5 spin-resistant, but according to the PiRep linked earlier in this thread, it pretty much is that. A “real pilot” of course will sneer at that and say something like “I’m pretty darn well able to watch my airspeed, thank you very much!” – but that’s not the point. Incidentally I’ve added the microlight-license to my lineup recently, flying in a Faeta321 mostly, and while that is a fun little plane the stall behavior with extended flaps is just a joke – the thing rolls over to one side and dives at a 60° angle at least, with only very little warning! Great feature for a recreational plane, in a configuration where the ground is most likely not far enough away to catch her in time. Of course, considering myself to be a “real pilot” too, I watch my airspeed and hope I can feel the approaching stall even if it’s only a very slight warning even when in a tight approach some day, but at this point I came to appreciate the Echo-class validation regime…
• The UI needs to be something like your car, or that game on the Xbox you’ve played recently. No need to twist dials or fiddle with magnetic compasses, or learn that when it counts that airspeed indicator will most likely display wrong and you need to memorize some IAS-CAS tables and also learn how your approach speed varies with your load – all of this is actually not necessary today, there are better technical solutions readily available. Icon uses them, which should go a long way to not alienate the target buying group.

Ah I’d say fair-weather VFR just-for-fun flying is not that hard – so if the Icon is mostly used like a Jet Ski or a fun yacht

But the weather is the problem. Those “rich people buying an A5” would not accept that they can use their aircraft only when the weather is fine throughout. And even if they do, weather will always come into the equation. And that’s where flying starts to become difficult.

Dooga wrote:

Ah I’d say fair-weather VFR just-for-fun flying is not that hard – so if the Icon is mostly used like a Jet Ski or a fun yacht (which you won’t put in the water in heavy rain and with an approaching storm), it might be a good overall match of capabilities, usage patterns, pilot skills and overall safety.

I don’t see what good that does to anyone. So there will be a few A5s sitting with their wings folded on the back deck of some yachts. Yachts that are used only one weekend each year. The A5 is a dream, and lots of people are specialists in selling dreams. Nothing wrong with that, except the price for this particular dream is way too high. You can get 5 Aeropract A22 (or something similar) for the price of one A5. The A22 even exists as an amphibian. This is a real dream for real people, and I look forward to see when the A5 will sell even 1% of the A22 sales (it will never happen).

I do like the idea of the A5; modern, simple to operate etc. It’s just that every single modern microlight is like that, but they are not surrounded by all this hype. Maybe because they don’t need to, they sell like hot cakes in any case.

LeSving wrote:

You can get 5 Aeropract A22 (or something similar) for the price of one A5.

Expect that the target customers of an Icon A5 would rather die than being seen next to an Aeropract…

achimha wrote:

Expect that the target customers of an Icon A5 would rather die than being seen next to an Aeropract…

I doubt they would even know the difference But if they do (by comparing prices ), it doesn’t change the very fact that the Aeropract is a real thing, for real people. This is what is needed to get people flying, not some toy that:

1. No normal person can afford
2. Is not purchased by those who are interested in flying, thus it will not be flown.

I agree LeSving, the Lada Niva is a good car.

The A5 is built in the US and clearly also meant to be used there (and in Canada). In Europe as already said the utility is really limited to just a few countries.
AFAIK the decline in GA in the US is caused by the aging population of pilots hardly being supplanted by a younger generation, and an important reason for that is the lack of ‘coolness’ of the typical school aircraft. The A5 is definitively cool, and learning to fly it is relatively easy no doubt so it could become a great impulse. But, how many youngsters or semi-youngsters would be able or prepared to spend this kind of money? You are talking 10 times the price of a sort-of similar fun machine, a jet-ski.
I’d be interested to hear the opinions of our American friends on this forum.

But, how many youngsters or semi-youngsters would be able or prepared to spend this kind of money? You are talking 10 times the price of a sort-of similar fun machine, a jet-ski. I’d be interested to hear the opinions of our American friends on this forum.

Very few to none. I’d be willing to hazard a guess that I’ll never see a privately owned A5 in operation (in the U.S.). What attracts people to aviation in the U.S., now, in the real world, in when their hard work is rewarded with a job that allows them to imagine spending $50-$100k to own an aircraft that can take them hundreds of miles away for the weekend, and to do aerobatics on short flights around the field. This seems to happen as people reach their late 30’s or so, then by their early 40s they are actively flying an RV7 or RV8.

What’s interesting to me is that people who dislike 1970’s mass production aircraft dislike the same features in those aircraft that they apparently admire in a plane like the Icon A5, i.e. car style trim that looks dumb 15 years after production. Meanwhile aircraft that just try to be aircraft are relatively timeless. Life as a fashion victim is an endless cycle of frustration ;-))))

The Aeroprakt looks like a lot of fun, but I think they sell just a few of anything on floats. I think the first time the ‘mass market amphibian’ thing failed was with the Republic Sea Bee, but it seems to come around again every so often! Canada and Alaska are surely the bigger markets for those types of planes, but they don’t buy that many new ones. A friend who ferried a rebuilt (MY 1953 or so) Piper Pacer up there to a new buyer told me he wished he’d been on floats because the safe forced landing opportunities en route would have been much greater.