Sport Pilot Talk

Well, here they go again. A 50% price hike for the Icon A5 Light Sport Amphibian? Not sure even the Rich and Shameless will spring for that.
https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all ... 1102epilot

100 knots plane with, admittedly professional finish , but with the same engine and inferior performance for 3 times the price of a typical quality European LSA ( which are considered higher end and expensive products to begin with )

Insane, imho.

Good lord you can almost buy a brand new 172sp for that.

$389K?...SWEET! I'll take two.....assuming they WILL take a third party check drawn on a bank in North Korea?

A lot of folks are certainly going to bail.

Then again, we live in a country where for many, $400k or so is a rounding error in their net worth. Adding an ICON A5 to a 10 million dollar yacht, or putting one in the hangar alongside their Citation or Gulfstream, for instance, would be an easy reach.

Are there 100 such folks around? If marketed properly, I would not want to bet against it.

FastEddieB wrote:A lot of folks are certainly going to bail.

Then again, we live in a country where for many, $400k or so is a rounding error in their net worth. Adding an ICON A5 to 10 million dollar yacht, or putting one in the hangar alongside their Citation or Gulfstream, for instance, would be an easy reach.

Are there 100 such folks around? If marketed properly, I would not want to bet against it.

They ,as a company, may actually survive and do well precisely for the reason you mention.
It is just my impression was that their original strategy was to sell in something akin to higher end RV truck, or mid level boat, market where someone with reasonably good income could expect to be able afford one - well, that ship has sailed.

foresterpoole wrote:Good lord you can almost buy a brand new 172sp for that.

Whats ironic in this case is not the price of Icon but the fact that Cessna is selling their 60 year old designs for $400 K

Frankly, it is astounding to realize that, if it weren't for Cirrus and various European LSAs , GA market would essentially be stuck back in the 60s.
People get excited about 60 year old designs like various Pipers and Mooney aircraft and , to be sure these were fine designs back in the day, but I cannot imagine, say, car companies trying to sell 80 year old engines and 60 year old frame designs with some lipstick thrown on top of it and expect to survive...
There has been tremendous progress ( leaps and bounds really ) in the car industry in the last 50 years ... there should have been similar progress in the aviation GA industry except for the fact that it has been dead for , well for very long - it is depressing really.

Warmi wrote: well, that ship has sailed.

No, that ship has sunk.

FastEddieB wrote:A lot of folks are certainly going to bail.

Then again, we live in a country where for many, $400k or so is a rounding error in their net worth. Adding an ICON A5 to a 10 million dollar yacht, or putting one in the hangar alongside their Citation or Gulfstream, for instance, would be an easy reach.

Are there 100 such folks around? If marketed properly, I would not want to bet against it.

People with that much wealth usually didn't get there by wasting money. When you can buy a similar airplane for a third of what ICON is charging, they are likely only to attract people who don't know any better and are basically "suckers".

I'm sure they did a market analysis and not just pull a number out of thin air. Look around the freeways, lots of high end cars these day. They are marketing it as a toy, not a means of transportation.

In a consumer business I used to own, every time I raised prices I got more customers. It was nuts.

MrMorden wrote:
People with that much wealth usually didn't get there by wasting money.

And yet, sit at a café on Las Olas Blvd in Ft Lauderdale and count the Lamborghinis, Ferraris and the like.

Conspicuous consumption is a thing.

A $400,000 toy is nothing for some of these people. I wouldn't be surprised if Cecil buys one for his wife.

Never mind. Someone decided to turn a tragic event into right-wing idiocy.

How tragic.

On Neil Cavuto’s 4P show today news had just hit. He concluded by saying “Sounds like a Thurman Munson kind of thing” or words to that effect*.

Way too early to speculate on that, but there were allegedly distress calls, and the nature of said calls should tell us a lot.

*I had to remind Karen who that was and the aviation connection.

Helen told us at this forum that a flip-up canopy was a liability in these circumstances.