{"id":20559,"date":"2018-10-04T11:59:34","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T15:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=20559"},"modified":"2018-10-26T10:42:49","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T14:42:49","slug":"icon-a5-pilot-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/04\/icon-a5-pilot-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Icon A5 pilot review"},"content":{"rendered":"

A friend who is a Cirrus SR22-G5 owner recently had the opportunity to fly the Icon A5.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

He hated the instrumentation (photo<\/a>). “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.”<\/p>\n

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.”<\/p>\n

He did not like that the attitude indicator was the smallest instrument (but the thing isn’t legal to take into the clouds anyway).<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

[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.]<\/p>\n

Related:<\/p>\n