Sport Pilot Talk

More hype from Hawkins in this article:

http://www.fastcompany.com/3059485/test ... r-pilots/1

Interesting that the reporter seem to think that SLSA stands for Sea Light Sport Airplane!

drseti wrote:Interesting that the reporter seem to think that SLSA stands for Sea Light Sport Airplane!

I thought the same thing when I read it this morning.

The article says he has $450 Million in pre-orders. I wonder how many millions in cancelled orders?

I will be very curious to see when this admittedly cool airplane with an equally admittedly terrible purchase contract actually starts deliveries in volume, and who the buyers wind up being. Hopefully many will join this forum. But I expect to hear a lot of complaints about trouble selling used Icons ...

No way.

With some quick googling, it looks like it only takes a 10 page contract to buy a shiny new B737.

drseti wrote:The article says he has $450 Million in pre-orders. I wonder how many millions in cancelled orders?

Number on order: approx. 180 (given $250k each and $450M order book)

Number delivered: 0

Icon pre-order customer:

.......

Hi Andy,

Give me a call. I have some inside info for you.

MrMorden wrote: Number delivered: 0

Icon pre-order customer:

The sad thing is when you find an old internet forum post with a customer saying "I've got an Icon on order, but it won't ship until 2012."

roger lee wrote:Hi Andy,

Give me a call. I have some inside info for you.

Just saw this. Wilco, as soon as the sun is up to a reasonable height over your timezone.

Cluemeister wrote:

MrMorden wrote: Number delivered: 0

Icon pre-order customer:

The sad thing is when you find an old internet forum post with a customer saying "I've got an Icon on order, but it won't ship until 2012."

Yeah, ouch.

You have to hand it to Icon marketing though. They keep customers on the hook for years, never delivering anything, for a product they claim is revolutionary, yet has no feature that doesn't exist on other airplanes. And their purchase agreement is really a glorified lease, yet some will sign it anyway. Amazing!

For perspective, Cirrus started taking deposits on their jet in 2006.

I don't recall anyone projecting a 10+ year wait.

Hard to know if the Icon A5 is just taking longer than expected, or is more like the Eclipse in that the company needs to fail in order for someone to pick up the pieces and have a real go at it.

Or maybe it's like the Elio, promising deliveries "next year" for almost a decade!

FastEddieB wrote:For perspective, Cirrus started taking deposits on their jet in 2006.

I don't recall anyone projection a 10+ year wait.

I hate to sound like a Cirrus apologist, but developing a brand new jet category with a chute that's also Part 23 certified as compared to a floatplane SLSA is a little different.

What makes it worse is the nonstop marketing machine (combined with no deliveries) that leads one to think it's all hat and no cattle.