The Website calls it “JET SKI FOR THE SKY.”
The cockpit looks like the one in your Ferrari.
The wings retract so you can pull it up on a trailer and take it with you on vacation.
The bottom of it lets you land on water with the landing gear retracted.
It’s the Icon A5. It’s what the FAA now calls a “Light Sport” aircraft and if’ you’ve not heard of this, well, you will.
At a $139,00 a pop and full-scale production to begin next year, this is just as the designers describe it–“Bad Ass.”
Designed by a former fighter pilot and one of his college design pals, the Icon A5 is leading the way into this new category of aircraft and it just looks like a hell of a lot of fun.
No, this aircraft doesn’t fall into the description of a jet aircraft, but after the work week is over, after the contracts are signed, after the stress of racing from one corner of the earth to the next, doesn’t it make sense to keep one of these on the side for those get aways?
From the Icon Web site comes the pronouncement that “The sport is back in flying…”
ICON claims it’s number one focus is to “bring the freedom, fun, and adventure of flying to all who have dreamed of flight.” That’s a pretty tall order, but it doesn’t take more than a second or two to look at the pictures of the plane to realize, they’re doing just that.
Want that version of the fast car and sport boat for the air? This is your plane.
ICON was founded in 2005 by Kirk Hawkins. Hawkins, a graduate from the Stanford Business School, is an accomplished engineer, former U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot, and long-time motorsport enthusiast. With its world-class team of engineers, designers, advisors, and investors, ICON is located in Southern California – home of the world’s largest concentration of both aerospace and automobile design resources. ICON’s engineering and development team came from Burt Rutan’s famed Scaled Composites, which created such record setting projects as Voyager, Global Flyer, the X-Prize winning SpaceShipOne, and Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo.