ICON Deaths

[megan]

Which is an urban legend perpetuated by wannabe retractable gear private pilots

Nope, it's a fact related by retractable pilots with experience. The worlds most experienced 747 pilot tells a tale of how he nearly landed Mr. Boeings biggest sans wheels.

[9 lives]

the fault here likely does not lie with the aircraft, but more likely with the pilot (and possibly the company culture).

Unfortunately, this is a common problem. I don't know the details of this sad event, but I would not be surprised to read this in the accident report. Demonstrating the company plane, to make it look good for sales, is a role which falls to the company test pilots, as well as doing what they should be doing. It's okay, as long as it's safe. But it's easy to get get carried away.

Seaplanes seem to temp pilots into low altitude maneuvering. I find myself training this out of new seaplane pilots, as they learn a new freedom in flying. Like a helicopter, the unwary pilot can put an airplane into a lot of low altitude places, from which recovery to normal controlled flight could be impossible.

[Ebbie 2003]

Another Icon A5 death, Roy Halladay the retired Canadian baseball player.

Plane's CofA issued Monday, crashed and dead pilot Tuesday.

There is video, looks like a swoopy descending turn, down to a few feet, accelerated stall - yup, just like the Icon idiots promote in their publicity videos.

It's a flying jetski, yeah right.

This together with the 30%+ price increase announced last week should just about kill them off - it was only in 2013 that is was being described as the $200,000 wonder, now all but $400,000.

They should stop with the swoopy, low level and formation videos and promote the fly at 1,000ft unless you are taking off or landing - but the one doesn't get the impression of speed. The you can't spin it doesn't mean you can't stall it, seems Roy Halladay found that out; he was an experienced 700hour pilot and had been doing promotional videos for Icon only last month.

[Katamarino]

Originally Posted by megan

Nope, it's a fact related by retractable pilots with experience. The worlds most experienced 747 pilot tells a tale of how he nearly landed Mr. Boeings biggest sans wheels.

No. It's definitely BS. There are legions of pilots flying retracts who never landed gear up in their entire flying career. Barring mechanical failure, it's not at all difficult to remember to put the gear down, if you have some discipline to your flying.