Aircraft
Icon Aircraft: Flying into the Future
Icon Aircraft's skills at composites manufacturing bode well for a development of a new family of airplanes.
Icon A5s at the company headquarters at Nut Tree Airport in Vacaville, California. (Photo: Matt Thurber)
Icon A5s at the company headquarters at Nut Tree Airport in Vacaville, California. (Photo: Matt Thurber)

Icon Aircraft has a relatively short history in the general aviation industry. The company launched, as many aircraft manufacturers do, with promises of low-cost innovation that later bowed to the realities of high certification and production costs. Contrary to the predictions of many naysayers, however, the company is still in business, it is producing airplanes—the Icon A5 amphibious light sport aircraft—and it is focused on extracting maximum efficiency from its production lines while still producing a high-quality recreational aircraft that people want to buy.

Quality costs money, however, and it was likely with some reluctance two years ago that Icon raised the price of the fully equipped A5 to $389,000, a number that probably seemed shocking to those who have followed the program from the beginning.

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