Not really a surprise. Wonder if they will find a Chinese money factory to pick it up like most others.
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Thanks for the update.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Wonder if they will find a Chinese money factory to pick it up like most others
Yeah, they sure would be a perfect candidate, would not be a surprise here either…
Icon is apparently already owned 47% by the Chinese. Flying Magazine Link 2022.
“Chinese entity Shanghai Pudong Science and Technology Investment Co. (PDSTI) holds a roughly 47-percent stake in the company”
Another article says PDSTI is wholly owned by the Chinese state, and so them losing money on Icon (a poor investment by any measure IMHO) and presumably somebody or some group in the US having received that money some time ago is just fine with me 
I bet somebody sent their kids to a nice private school, bought a new Ferrari after each round of refinancing
I wonder how many GA pilots are particularly sorry for that Icon disappearing? I mean, does anyone really care? It’s all a PR stunt from the start. It must be the most talked about (in media) and least used (as in actual flying) GA aircraft ever produced.
Yes exactly. It’s like the electric planes which can barely just leave the circuit or, with ridiculously contrived routes, make it to the next airport which has a charger and a cafe where you can sit for hours. Actually probably equivalent in viability. But look at the media coverage these contraptions get. You could not buy that sort of coverage. You would be spending so much money you would be buying entire magazine/newsletter issues, cover to cover. But bring out something new, no matter how useless, and you get it all for free.
Apparently they made over 200 A5s. That’s quite a number for an airplane these days. However, they lost close to 1 million bucks per plane. Still looks healthy compared to Lilium .
Unfortunately, the A5 could be regarded as a “jetski with wings” probably lots of fun, but not very useful for anything other than splashing between your home and neighbour’s lakes. Sure, like a jetski, that’s fun for a while, and adequate entertainment for some people, which is perfectly fine. But it’s a lot of money to tie up in a fun machine for the lake, and probably rather expensive to insure. For that amount of money, there remains adequate choice in more capable airplanes. The business model is different for building and selling expensive recreational machines to compete with a decent legacy fleet, there is always a market for the new machines, but the market is never large. If the small market can sustain the company, that’s great, but the A5 was never destined to be anything other than fun. Even a 172 on straight floats can be put to work, and a 185 floatplane can be a good money maker.
The Chinese were looking with great interest at the legacy Thruston Teal amphibian project, with thoughts to put it back into production. A colleague was trying to sell the whole lot to the Chinese, and I was involved with their on site examination. But I knew it would never come to anything, as there is not a legacy of GA flying, and in particular water, amphibian and tailwheel flying in China, so they are generations away from there being a large market there. Yes, they would sell some in North America, but not enough to sustain profitable manufacturing. Cessna, Piper and Beechcraft got it right, build tens of thousands of adequate airplanes to keep costs down, and sales up. It worked last century, not so well this century….
Icon’s sales talk was very different from all other manufacturers. Remember the fatal accident when the Chief Pilot(?) took the new Chief Engineer(?) for a flight, and flew low into a canyon they couldn’t get out of, They suggested risky things to not-yet-qualified potential buyers.
One capability was landing on snow, which has a very high variation in texture. Same for water, (Never flown a ski or float plane, but have cross-country skied, and cruised with sail and power, In both cases in conditions where an aircraft would suffer damage,)
