LOS ANGELES — FAA officials have completed a compliance audit at ICON Aircraft’s Tehachapi, California, facility, which led agency officials to issue the first Special-Light-Sport Aircraft (LSA) airworthiness certificate for ICON’s A5.
With this milestone complete, ICON will now begin customer deliveries for the A5, which has a backlog of more than 1,250 orders, according to company officials.
“The successful completion of the FAA’s audit of the A5 is one of the most critical milestones in our company’s history,” said ICON Aircraft CEO and Founder Kirk Hawkins. “This means that after years of intense development by the ICON team, our customers and the media will finally get a chance to experience the A5 firsthand and form their own opinions.”
“Given the years of work to get here, it’s awesome to finally see production-ready, conforming A5 aircraft in serial production,” said ICON Chief Technical Officer Matthew Gionta.
Prior to the FAA audit, ICON performed extensive testing, including the successful structural test of the airframe of Engineering Serial Number 2 (ESN-2) in February. ICON also flew the first customer aircraft (ASN-001) for the first time on April 24.
The FAA audit team reviewed ICON’s production, quality, and compliance procedures and manuals. The audit team included Aviation Safety Inspectors (ASI) from the Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, and Los Angeles offices, who assessed the manufacturing facility and performed the airworthiness review of the first customer A5.
ICON will deliver its first customer aircraft on July 20 at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin. Several A5 aircraft will be present at the event in late July, with both owner demonstration flights and static displays.
The company will transition serial production to its new 140,000-square-foot facility in Vacaville, California, in September.
I have wanted to fly and own a light sport plane like this A5. I also thought that light sport aircraft offered an entry point to own your own aircraft. I guess I am wrong again. $50K to $60K is doable along with associated maintenance and feeding. However when one starts getting in the $100 to $200K range I can not justify the cost to fly for my own enjoyment. I guess a nice canoe on open water is in my future.
The prices I saw showed $189,000 but not sure that is the end amount you would expect to pay.
LSA rules are an odd set of rules that don’t play well with traditionally certified aircraft. Not sure LSA is a viable long term program as it is setup. The ICON A5 already got an exception on gross weight from FAA, not sure how that will play into the future. Seems to me if the FAA wants LSAs to be able to weight more they should change the rules to include whatever weight they want.
The airplane may turn out to be a great plane, just not sure it should have been certified as an LSA.
What is the selling price for a bare standard aircraft?
Actually Lee, nobody will cover the A5 with product liability insurance. Somebody should ask Icon about that…
So……what’s with the move to Vacaville? Gotta do it all again or what?
And how can anybody make something cost effective in California? Why not make it in Mississippi or Texas?
This will absolutely be one of the best light sport airplanes available. I can only imagine the fun of flying it from a runway, or the water. If only it could be purchased for a price that didn’t include tens of thousands of dollars for product liability…