I am just back from Oshkosh. Thanks to the readers who got up for my 0830 presentation on helicopter aerodynamics and maneuvers!
Let me start a series of postings on the event with Icon Aircraft, a great example of the typical path for a new general aviation manufacturer. I summarized the experience with “In case you missed the 2010 show, Icon was there with the same booth, the same promised delivery timeline, the same aircraft, and more than double the price tag.” The two-seat Icon A5 (my 2010 review) will now be over $400,000 with a few options, i.e., enough to purchase a fleet of 8 four-seat Cessnas on floats!
By contrast, Pipistrel was there with an interesting electric self-launching motor glider (complete with solar charging trailer for about $160,000; this was an already-delivered-to-the-customer plane, not a prototype) as well as their usual slate of Slovenian wonders. Cirrus also impressed with their steady stream of improvements to the SR2x series. They provided superb on-site customer support. An SR22 pilot camped near us managed to lock himself out of the plane. The Cirrus folks had thoughtfully brought a complete set of all possible keys to the show and had him back in his plane within a couple of hours. Cirrus also ran an owners’ lounge within their pavilion, complete with air-conditioning and cold drinks (though temps never got into the 90s).
Cirrus seems to be the prime force in light GA for personal transportation. The Cirrus owners’ group dinner was attended by over 700 people. Nearly every row in the campground contained a Cirrus. We met an Italian SR22T owner who flies over every year. This year it took four days to reach Oshkosh from Italy: “Once you get above 20,000′ in the Arctic there are never any clouds.” He had the plane packed with three guys, North Atlantic survival gear, etc. Cirrus is the only mass-produced and mass-maintained family airplane out there. The company had a “7,000 edition” plane parked in front of its pavilion. That’s not huge compared the 18,000-airplane-per-year rate achieved in the late 1970s (nytimes), but everyone else today seems to doing things on a hand-crafted basis. Despite having purchased an SR20 factory-new in 2005, I have been kind of a skeptic regarding the company’s claims to be revolutionizing GA. The parachute seemed like a gimmick when the engine was new. Now that it is approaching 2,000 hours I feel differently about it!
Here’s EAA’s “Innovation Showcase”. The Piper Seminole parked in front was certified in 1978. It is powered by engines that were first run in 1955.
Icon has some nifty videos of tiny women flying the A5. It looks crazy dangerous, flying around all those freeways, skyscrapers, & powerlines. The cockpit didn’t look waterproof enough to last very long. Surprised they don’t smash into rocks or the famous ocean garbage patch the media tells us about. Old age has definitely killed the excitement of James Bond vehicles.
Offtopic, but someone did change gender to save on car insurance in Canada recently!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/change-gender-identification-insurance-alberta-1.4754416
I like the Icon, it looks like a cool airplane, I wonder if I could get a demo ride around the Bedford or Laconia area.
Practical: aircraft insurance rates are not gender-based, as far as I know. So a gender change on the pilot certificate is mostly useful for improving advancement in the airline industry (see http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2018/05/12/the-purported-airline-pilot-shortage/ ).
According to Crunchbase Icon raised $90m. In an alternate universe they could have acquired Searey (I’d guess for less than $20m and possibly a lot less), burned millions tarting the Searey LSX up and told all their position holders they’d be getting planes a lot sooner.
The A5 looks more modern but the Searey basically matches or beats it on cruise speed and useful load, I prefer the sliding canopies, and it’s now available for less than half the price. With the remaining tens of millions they could have scaled production and pushed manufacturing cost even lower.
All of this is to say that the idea that the US has lost the ability to innovate in GA is bunk; there’s plenty but it all migrated decades ago into the libertarian utopia of the experimental world. Some of this is flowing back in a way with factory-built LSAs like the Searey, the RV-12, and others, and even Cirrus started there. It’s almost a random clinical trial of what happens when you strip back mountains of regulation and liability.
Colin: How could Icon have survived for 13 years on $90 million plus minimal revenue from customers? https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2016/may/25/icon-slashes-production-lays-off-workers says that in 2016 they had 160 employees, presumably primarily in high-cost California. Let’s say that their total costs are $200,000 per employee per year (a low estimate given that they were setting up production lines and would have been investing in tooling?). That’s a $32 million per year burn rate.
Are you sure that the U.S. experimental world is as innovative as Pipistrel and its electric folding creations? The RV-12 that you cite looks pretty similar to the 1937 Ercoupe! (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ERCO_Ercoupe )
Colin: Don’t forget that the Searey can take off in about 1/3th the runway compared to the Icon A5! So the Icon might work for a monster lake out West, but don’t try getting in and out of small lakes in Maine or New Hampshire, especially in the summer! The Icon really needs the 135 HP version of the Rotax engine rather than the 100 HP that it does have.
Is Tahoe long enough for the A5? The density altitude out there in the summer can be over 10K very easily IIRC.
Maybe they raised more than 90m; that would only further the point that Searey used its capital far more effectively. Perhaps Icon employed a lot fewer people for a long time until they started ramping production. They also opened a plant in Mexico a couple years ago, are any of those people counted in the 160? If I were Searey, I’d be offering incentives to A5 position holders, but maybe they’ve got a formula that works for them and are happy to leave well enough alone.
As for the RV vs. Pipistrel, it’s an imperfect comparison because they are building to satisfy different regulatory regimes. Van’s is targeting the LSA market where the FAA dictates you can have your plane any way you like, so long as it performs like an Ercoupe. The larger RVs may not look quite as sleek as the Pipistrels but they put up pretty comparable performance numbers. With FAR 23 reform, it will be interesting to see if they move towards certification for the -9 or -10, as they claim that their aircraft have been designed to meet or exceed all standards. I suspect that part of the miracle of the experimental world is that manufacturer liability costs are dramatically lower when all you’re warranting was that the materials and plans are suitable and you have no control over the amateur nutcases who rivet them together.