I was an early position holder - placed an order when it was priced at ~$150K, flew the A5 in 2018 and was extremely impressed with the plane, tons of fun. It really is a great plane; anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they’re talking about. BUT, the price increases and restrictive terms made me cancel the order. Zero interest at $350K. Icon took on enormous overhead based on their belief that they could sell them in big volumes, obviously unrealistic in hindsight. After I cancelled my order I told the Icon leadership the company would eventually declare bankruptcy and be restructured at a cost structure able to support selling the A5 at a marketable price. Here we are, and we shall see.

If it wasnt for Microsoft Flight Sim I doubt I would have ever heard of these guys

A beautiful airplane but twice what it should cost.

I work on these airplanes frequently. We have 3 on our field, and work closely with the company. Communication with them is very good, however maintenance is excessive, and the number of safety directives and service letters on the planes are astounding. That coupled with the high purchase price, and the very limited mission, its customer base is very very niche.

The Icon A5 has always looked great to me, but the price is at a level where I'd rather have a sailboat. Sailboats are a LOT more practical.

The private airplane market is insane because of costs. Thats's why I quit flying years ago. However, I use the Microsoft flying simulator, and fly the A5 from there. With their worldwide maps, I use it to explore the worlds rivers and coasts. Almost as good as being there in real life, and tens of thousands of $ cheaper !

I believe they also required an onboard camera recording while operating and they owned the camera and recording. Nobody likes being told they have to be watched and recorded while enjoying their own flying time.

I'm pissed and I don't even fly. My CNC machine shop is right down the street from them in Vacaville CA and I watch the test flights all the time. I saw so many I thought they were doing great. Bummer

When this first was proposed, it was supposed to be AFFORDABLE…..and the rest is history.

It's a shame that this comes literally five weeks after they announced a 60 lbs gross weight increase with the four-bladed propeller. The 430 lbs useful load always seemed ridiculously small to me, and would really limit its ability to carry two adults. The increased useful load of 490 lbs still isn't great, but at least you've got a reasonable chance of being able to fly with a friend and have enough load to fill up with more than an hour of fuel.

My friends dad had one. He loved it

What happened? They ended up with a $250k flying jet-ski. Calling it a limited market is the understatement of the decade. Early on.....they focused on looking cool. Spending gobs of cash at shows like Oshkosh. Of course they massively underestimated the final cost and delivery schedule. Such a wasted effort.

They put wings on an underpowered see-doo and charge 400K for it. Wonder why it failed

Thanks Mojo for your informative videos.

🦘🇦🇺Thank you for the update. I hope it’s a good learning curve for them & they get their act together. 🙏

I cannot say they did it on purpose, but a lot of startups do this crap: 1. Come up with something that sounds amazing. 2. Claim it will be inexpensive and revolutionary. 3. Put most of their efforts into raising investor money. 4. Pay themselves way too much and spend the rest of the money in stupid ways. 5. Over promise and under deliver. 6. File bankruptcy so they don't have to pay anybody back. 7. Walk away having elevated their own lifestyle using other peoples' monies without consequence. They're looking for somebody to buy the company? They're looking for a chump. They're looking for some moron to pay a positive amount for an entity that has a negative net worth. It's just a way to grab some more "other people's money" on the way out.

Very well made video, always loved this plane and enjoyed your overview!

Was icon the only place where they could overhaul the airframe? So now are they going to run courses for mechanics to be certified to carry out these overhauls for the current owners of the aircraft. If not wonder what the 2nd hand value is now. Hmmm interesting to see how this pans out.

I believe a weight exemption was required on their first variant. And then you have much better offerings from Searey, Super Petrel, and others that are not only cheaper and safer, but already have a strong established customer base.

I got to fly a demo flight of one and land on the water. One of the most memorable experiences of my life

It's an interesting case study on aviation business and aircraft manufacturing. While doing aviation consulting about a decade ago, my business partner questioned whether there was a market for this type of airplane. The original price was enticing, I considered buying one with a partnership agreement, but due to the slow development/certification, it was a wait and see. My business partner was an old school businessman, told me it wouldn't make it based on the limited demand for a seaplane, which is usually the case. His opinion on the flying car concept was a hilarious take on reality, which I still totally understand that one, and please...never invest in a company promising a flying car! Nonetheless, the Icon-5 unfortunately peaked it's demand and found that selling recreational airplanes to be a tough go. Despite the clever design and features, it probably didn't have a chance. The better option for aircraft development, is to use the engineering talent not in design, but manufacturing. An automated construction method that provides an inexpensive airframe with higher quality, along with lower cost of ownership, at that point a 4 seat single engine would sell very well. Think Henry Ford type of out of the box production thinking, and economy of scale, you probably have a successful business model.

That actually really sucks, i really loved the concept of this plane, hopefully somebody can end up filling this niche in the world of flying

It cost to darn much!!! It was/is a great plane, but damn the price is just to high for what it is. It was basically a jetski with wings, but they tried selling it as a new Cessna 172. However, the 172 is much more practical for about the same money. It was a slow plane without much range, and a crazy high price. All that equals fail.

I sat in one recently. It’s a cramped toy. It has almost no useful load.

Good information.Very informative.

Only 45 seconds into this video and want to state the obvious. I-Con's downfall was being greedy. They stated an initial price and within 2 years of release they quadrupled their prices. They pretty much priced themselves out of customers and the market. They could of been a big hit if it wasn't for their greed. They would of sold so many planes if they stuck around their initial price. I would of been a customer of theirs if they didn't ask for another $150k on top of their initial price. Which is why I'm now a proud owner of a 1947 Republic RC-3 with a Robinson conversion (LS3). I've got more range, more power, more useful load and more seats for 1/4 the price of an I-Con.

Mike it's such a fun fly , loved fling it , I wanted one very badly but the contact an themselves making me see many red flags , so didn't, still thinking of getting a used one , funnest plane for weekend playing, it's a great toy

This makes me sad. I had planned to buy one in a couple years.

Thanks for this update. I was enamored with this plane when I first heard about it and I knew about the crashes, but the details are interesting.

Silent Yachts, the solar yacht company also filed Bankruptcy.

I remember seeing this plane when it was closer to the $400K mark and said the only people who would be interested in a plane that expensive and that limited were rich people with money to burn. But I still thought they would succeed. I had no idea about 1. you have to bring the PLANE back for a frame overhaul at 2k hours and 2. you can't sue them if you crash? I mean, what other conclusion can you draw other than even they don't trust the plane they were putting out? It's not surprising they went bankrupt!

Very informative video, thanks. The entire ICON operation at Santa Monica Airport (KSMO as seen in your opening sequence) was very sloppy. After a very brief and almost laughable 'preflight,' the female company demo pilot did not conduct any semblance of a decent cockpit briefing, and as a Commercial Pilot, the entire experience was troubling to me. I'd heard that a passenger on a demo flight there in 2018 was seriously injured and hospitalized due to lack of an adequate egress briefing in the airplane with that same demo pilot.

One of my neighbors has one of these. I chuckle every time I see him drive down the street towing his airplane on a trailer. He loves the thing.

The SeaRay is a simpler and much cheaper option .

The Super Petrel will fill the hole.

I just remember that Roy Halladay crash. That really hurt them

I worked with them as a contractor, they were sold to a Chinese company and didn't produce shit due to politics within the company and greed. They shit the bed with a great product and I hope someone takes their IP to keep producing, but the 400k price tag that people were seeing after a 250k promise was just fucking stupid. They cost 120k to produce in parts. I had a plan to fix the company but I was shit on and they sourced to Mexico with zero planning besides " oh it will be cheaper!" it was the brains behind the operation that failed, not the "cost", typical in a startup, ego's above product.

Mike, there was a lot of old information you were putting out that is on the internet but has been corrected or just wrong. And don't get started with some of the haters below who clearly are in one camp or another. I think you know someone who sells ICONs in Texas that you need to talk to and clear up your misunderstandings. Not sure if you have another airframe you prefer or get sponsored which may forbid the conversation, but talk to him and at least have a little more clearity (on or off mic). For me, I obviously love the look and flying characteristics of the ICON A5 (and yes the performance for what it was designed to do it does, especially with a 4-blade prop and increased weight mod my airframe will have a 500lb useful load). Of course it was never designed to takeoff in 300ft, 4000ft/min climb and 8hr endurance (my bladder has a 2hr limit🤣). I don't hate on any other models and would love to fly them all. They all have goods and bad. Overall for the market though, all these manufactures provide diversity of looks, finish, performance, options, and price (Yes ICON is at the upper end, but some would say $1.3mil for a new Cirrus is ridiculous, yet others don't). It's like football-You may be a Cowboy's Fan and you support your team, but you gotta love the game as a whole and wanted it to be strong sport in the future. Same for me in the Amphibious LSA world. ICON is still open, selling, servicing and supporting. Not hate'n, just saying...

Hey Mojo, have you looked into the Samson Switchblade? Looks like an A5 land version.

If they could have sold them for $150K, they would have been fine. But when a company tells you you have to overhaul the airframe every 2,000 hours? (Like any of these would ever get to 2,000 - c'mon, it's a "fly around the patch" toy, not a cross-country machine.) And then the price triples? Overhyped, oversold, underdelivered.

In my opinion, the LSA constraints are what killed the A5. They wanted to be an Amphibious Cirrus, but could hold enough or go far enough for it to be a practical design. Perhaps MOSAIC will make way for a more practical version of this type of plane in the future. I do have to admit, the folding wings and trailer ability was very cool.

They changed their policies that made it sort of like a lease rather than purchase of the aircraft. What I was told was even if you owned the aircraft, they required you to have THEM do all service of your aircraft...

Nice summary, Mike. Just curious, what’s the technical reason stated by the manufacturer that it needs to be sent back to factory at 2k hours for an airframe overhaul?

What about icon telling you that you had to train with them or they had to approve you for the purchase or they had to approve who you would sell it to or the fact that they made you do maintenance through them or the fact that they raised the price to over triple

Good video!

Private aviation is very expensive. For most, it is primarily a toy. AA-5 owner here.

When I saw that they made the instrument panel look like an automobile I had doubts about its future success.

Thanks for your opinion about that plane 😮

I commented on the original video when he was introducing it. He was pricing himself out of business before he got it up and selling good. He responded by “saying get two or three people and by interest in it.”😂😂😂

I flew one and loved it. Such a small niche though…hard to really thrive as a manufacturer.

very cool plane. However as practical as a flying jet-ski

Served very little purpose for such a high price point. If they were smart they would have dropped the price by a huge amount and made it more affordable to GA enthusiasts. Its only a 2 seater low endurance and not much payload. Cant be asking that sort of price for a gymic

I helped them set up their production line in Vacaville, and then later in Mexico when they moved. I always thought it was a neat (and niche) aircraft, but it seemed overpriced from the start. Still, it's a shame that they failed.

Overpricing is killing al GA aviation in all terms and nobody is doing anything, other that raising prices more. Even SLSA, EAB are going nuts, and those companies filing bankruptcy is the result, $250+/hr or more is a price most aspiring pilots can not pay. Vans Aircraft bankruptcy too, with An RV12 started in less than $45k kit, now is gone beyond $100k, $150k ready to fly? when this new class was suposed to be reasonable, affordable, a Cessna 172 beyond $500k? Cirrus almost a $1Million? Really you think thats ok,No way, I was a wannabe pilot, doing it out of my pocket, no grants, 68hrs completed for PPL, help from nobody and quit! sad but I quited.

It’s just a jet ski with wings. Way over priced. I get it, certification takes a ton of money, but experimental category should help with that.

We almost bought in when it was $140k. Something gave us pause, and glad it did. Nice bird, but at it's current price, a 172SP makes more sense.

Hopefully they can restructure and keep going forward as a viable business. Kudos to them for doing something different.

It was unreasonably expensive, like most new GA aircraft

How will the new weight specs for light sport effect Icon's ability to add more power and payload? Wasn't the LSA weight limit their root engineering problem?

The airplane was built for an en excluiive smaller market, 7 figure people need only apply. And then only a percentage of those people would be interested. Icon, definitely not going to be the Henry Ford of Avaton .

Mojo - I love your channel. I am a pilot as well, AND I can tell you this, for "essentially" 1/2 a million bucks, I'll take a shiny new Cessna 172 SP - Thank you very much !!! - for an example..... I'm a "hundred dollar hamburger" kind of pilot - nothing fancy 🙂

Isn't that plane the one Matt holiday crashed?

Great video. Calm, no senstaionalism. Happy to be corrected but I think the initial price was $140,000 ten or so years back. A friend had just paid $180,000 for a new car and so I thought, well there's a good argument for the wife, it's cheaper and more fun than a new car :) I was impressed with the spin-resistant design they kept demo-ing in test flight vids. I hope they are saved (under fresh management).

Really sad to see it go... :(

It was too expensive for what you get, so nobody wanted to buy it. There are just better options.

Interesting, the folks from Icon were out at the Miami International Boat show trying to sell planes. The sales person told me it would take over a year to buy one and get it built, like they had a huge backlog of orders.

Designed by car stylists, with little thought for production methods or costs. An inevitable result I’m afraid…

I have two words to say about the icon… Roy Halladay No, he was not fit to fly. I agree with that, but that aircraft is challenging, nevertheless.

So sad!! Let's hope for a buyer that can turn it around.

You mentioned the company had Chinese investors and production was moved to Mexico. Wondering if the company can stay afloat IF it had moved to China instead.

It is too bad that this happened, it had a very unique design where you could take off or land on both land and water. I only fly remote control planes and eflite made an a5 which I flew but they don’t make them anymore. I wish someone would bring it back😢

An A5 with 800SHP Pratt turboprop, 6 bladed prop, 4 seats, cargo space, Garmin glass would have been awesome.

Totally a guess but what might to be an ongoing decline in general aviation interest could also have been a factor. And yes, that would apply to all aircraft manufacturers, but Icon might not have had the buffer margin to manage the added shenanigan. Hopefully the engineering, design and lessons learned will not be lost.

Hi Mike!!

I don't know anything about the plane but just looking at it it seems like it is complicated to build. That's a shot in the foot right there if I am correct.

Great video about a sad story. Happens the same thing with cars. A lot of independent manufacturers driven almost solely by passion face a brick wall of regulations and certifications. The costs start to spiral out of control and they are never heard of again. As the decades go by, there are less and less manufacturers each year until one day there will be just one left.... holding the market hostage. Are we sure we are on the right track? honest question.

Unfortunately, Progressive Aerodyne (Searey) also closed their doors a little over a year ago after 30 years. Same story. Sold the company to a group based in Mainland China. Closed a couple of years later. They were still selling spare parts sporadically, then vacated the factory a couple of months ago. I hope someone ressurects it one day. Such a shame 😂

Some remarks on the flying cars compared to light seaplanes in general. A sea-land aircraft can fly and land on a lake (not the sea due waves) and on airfields. Imagine that footprint on a map. A flying car can fly, land on an airfield and drive over all existing roads in the world. Compare that footprint on the same map. This is essentially different. The market is much bigger; as the transport envelope is much greater and very finely meshed. The technical challenges of building are much higher, however. Flying mass, folding mechanisms, and road and air legislation togheter in a limited size and appropriate price. The high price is compensated by the transport envelope, which is virtually unlimited. The A5 sells a holyday dream, a flying car sells real useable transport. Hence another class. So: Think out of the box.

This is how some planes develope over the years. They go bankrupt and somebody buys it for pennies on the dollar and it continues. Eclipse is one of them .They spent a billion dollars on the program and someone came in and bought it for a few million.

I plan to invest in traditional wood Sampans. Much more affordable, and the way the world is going the market is massive.

*Cheaper place to build + price goes up = greed.*

I feel the camera focus is on the shirt?, if is a fixed lens I think moving the camera back would help? or is it just me? I just feel this videos are too high quality everywhere else so maybe is intentional?

God Bless. .. ..

Everyone mentions the price, but let's be honest, it's the dollar. It's not worth anything anymore, especially if you're Manufacturing in America

I dream of owning an Icon A5. Unfortunately, it may never happen. BTW, the three high profile accidents they had were all pilot error. The 2000 hour airframe service was something that I didn’t know about until watching this video.

Prices are too high for everyone. Make aviation affordable again.

Working as an A&P for years and retired now. A insurance reliable is cost is great. Many times in GA the pilot is the issue.

I've always wanted one of these aircraft but could never afford one. 😔

Is it a jet ski with wings??

It was a great, attractive design. But it was too slow, way too expensive and the company was overbearing in its requirements of the customer. Its marketing was utterly disastrous, promoting the A5 as a casual lifestyle accessory for the super rich. You cannot sell thousands of units with that image. Quite the opposite. It should have been promoted as an amphibious craft for the common man then kept the price down through economies of scale. It also made the mistake of promoting the A5 as "easy". No aircraft is easy and requires thorough training.

So which one is your new airplane?

The A5 was a really cool flying jet ski for the rich.

Low production numbers prevented economies of scale. So the per unit cost has to go up.

When i can buy a real airplane for the same price as this flying toy, what would you choose,? i can buy a LA270 lake amphib for the same price,or a cessna 180 amphib, just another company whos priced itself out of the market.

To be fair it looked fantastic! Performance wise, nothing to write home about though. Overpriced product sold by a badly manged company. All that hype,! But the price, the contract, the high profile crashes killed it. Interestingly, no novice pilot ever died in an A5. It was experienced pilots who flew their planes into the ground!

I think Robinson helicopters requires you to send the helicopter back to the factory for overhaul every 2000 hrs.

Pricing is what killed them. Fabulous piece of kit but not at $400K. They need to sell/manufacture 10 planes a month to break even.

Too expensive for a toy, crazy contract, horribly managed company from the start which led to low production quantity and ever increasing pricing.

I really wanted a a5 but I don't trust the company at all.. This is a serious management issue.. Big thoughts and plans without the logistics.. A trusted name would do wonders.. This is a "toy" for those who can have one to use when they want to have fun, like most of these floaters.. Excellent explanation..

another Classic Example of Over Promising, and Under Delivering. The "Contract" they proposed was absolutely ridiculous. There are better options out there for less money. I predict that the Vickers Aircraft Wave will succeed where this one failed.