A friend who is a Cirrus SR22-G5 owner recently had the opportunity to fly the Icon A5.
He liked the flight characteristics and described the controls as “coordinated”. On the other hand, the plane was not more fun to yank and bank than the SR22.
He hated the instrumentation (photo). “The prominent altimeter in the cluster goes only to 1,000′ [reading out in height above the ground, I think]. If you want to know your actual altitude you have to redirect your attention to the Garmin GPS in the center.”
What about the angle of attack indicator, intended to keep customers safe even when the aircraft is over-gross (i.e., all the time given the likely buyers and their girth!)? “Useless. You put the nose down and the indicator won’t change for 2 or 3 seconds. There is a huge amount of lag.”
He did not like that the attitude indicator was the smallest instrument (but the thing isn’t legal to take into the clouds anyway).
“There was a lot of vibration,” he said. “It felt like being in a helicopter. Maybe it was buffeting from flying with the doors off.”
He would have bought it at $200,000 if it had conventional instruments. At $390,000 and/or the prices that they’re asking to buy into a partnership, he is not interested.
[He also felt that they had some options to upsell and therefore the real price was over $400,000. Due to his lack of interest in the plane, however, he didn’t get a formal quote.]
Related:
At what point will it be cheaper to reverse engineer and rebuild Grumman Geese than to buy one of these things?
We could use more examples of affordable LSA seaplanes instead of the SR-22.
superMike: It is already cheaper to buy an actual Grumman seaplane! Here’s a nice-looking Widgeon for $325,000: https://www.controller.com/listings/aircraft/for-sale/23618901/1945-grumman-g44-widgeon
https://www.barnstormers.com/classified_1255935_GRUMMAN+WIDGEON.html is probably rougher and is only $150,000.
Seats 5 and fully IFR-capable!