![\"\"](\"http:\/\/i2.cdn.turner.com\/cnn\/dam\/assets\/161117114725-icon-a5-aircraft-top-tease.jpg\" "\\"\\""){kind=icon}
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The intuitive amphibious ICON A5 looks like a sports car<\/p>\n
It does require a sports pilot license to fly it <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n \n When it comes to piloting a plane, I have zero experience.\n <\/p>\n \n In fact, I\u2019ve never even considered attempting it.\n <\/p>\n \n Nevertheless, as we swoop over Florida\u2019s Tampa Bay on a gorgeous November morning, I enthusiastically take over the controls of the ICON A5, a two-seater amphibious plane that looks like a sports car, maneuvers like a jet ski and is so intuitive, the company says that even a novice can learn to fly it in less than 30 hours.\n <\/p>\n \n At 23 feet long and weighing in a 1,510 pounds, it\u2019s known as a sea light-sport aircraft.\n <\/p>\n \n Designed to help you focus on the freedom of flying without worrying if the plane will react unpredictably, there\u2019s nothing else quite like it on the market.\n <\/p>\n \n Now that I\u2019m in control, my whole body tenses for a good five minutes. Am I really ready to pilot this shiny new machine all by myself? I\u2019m not entirely sure.\n <\/p>\n \n However, I take comfort in the fact that the A5 was built specifically for people like me, and it was designed to drive like a car.\n <\/p>\n \n Plus, the fact that Icon\u2019s CEO and founder, Kirk Hawkins, is next to me in the cockpit doesn\u2019t hurt either. He can take over the controls at any time.\n <\/p>\n \n So far, so good.\n <\/p>\n \n We glide smoothly through the air at about 1,000 feet, and I\u2019m comfortable enough to take in the sights. Lovely Fort De Soto Park doesn\u2019t disappoint.\n <\/p>\n \n Squiggles of dreamy white dunes are surrounded by water that looks like it should be in the Caribbean.\n <\/p>\n \n The Sunshine Skyway Bridge, with its series of long-spanning cables, is equally impressive.\n <\/p>\n \n The adrenaline is still racing. And as most surreal experiences go, it just keeps getting better.\n <\/p>\n \n For starters, there\u2019s another ICON A5 to my left, which is thrilling in itself. We are flying in formation, and my job is to mimic its movements. You\u2019d think this would be intimidating, but it\u2019s not.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s just plain fun.\n <\/p>\n \n That\u2019s music to Hawkins\u2019 ears. He\u2019s the brains behind this newfangled plane, an idea 10 years in the making.\n <\/p>\n \n As a former Air Force F-16 pilot and a Stanford Business School grad, he has focused most of his adult life on making sport flying available to the masses.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe idea for us was to create an airplane where the average human being can go out and experience the world without having the burden of becoming a professional pilot,\u201d he says.\n <\/p>\n \n So it makes sense that the dashboard looks like what you see in your car. There are only a few gauges that I don\u2019t recognize.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s the Apple approach to things,\u201d he says. \u201cYou humanize it, and make it intuitive and easy and cool.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He\u2019s so confident people will want to fly (and buy) his planes that he just opened a flight-training facility at Peter O. Knight Airport.\n <\/p>\n \n Located on Davis Island, five minutes from downtown Tampa, it\u2019s a place where both beauty and sailboats abound.\n <\/p>\n \n The company\u2019s other training center is in Vacaville, California, where ICON is headquartered.\n <\/p>\n \n By 9 a.m., it\u2019s time for a brief water-landing pitstop.\n <\/p>\n \n Hawkins takes over the controls. I\u2019ve been too busy learning to fly in formation (not something non-pilots get to try very often) and interviewing Hawkins to even think about learning to do a water landing myself. It\u2019s something Hawkins tells me most people can master in about 30 minutes.\n <\/p>\n \n A few negative-Gs and 360-degree turns later and it becomes a fun roller-coaster ride in the sky. Plus, it\u2019s an open-air flight, so I occasionally flop my arms out. Just because I can.\n <\/p>\n \n At a few hundred feet above the water, it\u2019s easy to spot a boater waving at us, a flock of pelicans and even stingrays.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe\u2019re gonna pull over here and stop and get out for a second,\u201d he says.\n <\/p>\n \n Surely he\u2019s kidding, right? But after landing the plane on the water, he takes off his seatbelt, and I realize he\u2019s not.\n <\/p>\n \n Sky pioneers: A light aircraft revolution is taking off\n <\/p>\n \n Seconds later, he pops the roof and we climb onto the wings, which could easily double as diving boards. Suddenly, this feels less like a plane outing and more like I\u2019m on a boat sunbathing.\n <\/p>\n \n Everything is drenched in a mesmerizing golden hue. I can imagine picnicking on the beach nearby. Or taking the plane somewhere for a remote weekend camping trip.\n <\/p>\n \n Because the plane has a range of about 430 miles on a full tank, it\u2019s made for short getaways.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis entire thing is about inspiring people,\u201d he explains. \u201cOnce you learn to fly, you will never be the same. You will look at the sky different, you will look at the planet different.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe primary motor skills for operating a plane are pretty easy,\u201d Hawkins tells me. \u201cWe have people landing by themselves with an instructor on their very first day, within 30 minutes.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n That said, they\u2019ve painstakingly taken the time to design it for safety. The goal of the spin-resistant airframe feature is that if the pilot makes mistakes, the airplane doesn\u2019t lose control.\n <\/p>\n \n As a backup, there\u2019s a complete airplane parachute.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe spin resistance feature is a big deal as it\u2019s the first airplane that the FAA has deemed spin-resistant,\u201d says Chris Dupin, a flight instructor and US Air Force officer. \u201cA significant number of general aviation fatalities are from loss of control accidents that involve an unrecovered spin on the base to final turn.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Plus, there\u2019s the angle of attack indicator, something you don\u2019t typically see in a light aircraft. It shows you where the wing is happy (in the green) or where it could stall (in the red).\n <\/p>\n \n The pilot\u2019s job is to keep the wing within the green or yellow section of the gauge. This is part of what makes water takeoffs and landings so easy to learn.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cKirk Hawkins has an extremely creative and innovative idea for pilot training that is more intuitive; teaching the feel of flight first and the principals and structure later, not unlike how people learn to drive,\u201d says Christine Negroni, veteran aviation journalist and author of \u201cThe Crash Detectives.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe world is facing a pilot shortage, so the idea of teaching differently, so that different learning styles can be accommodated could very well expand the pool of pilot candidates.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n On that note, about 40% of the folks who\u2019ve put down deposits for the ICON A5 are not pilots, which means this plane is drawing aviation newbies.\n <\/p>\n \n After an hour and a half of flying time, Hawkins lands us on the airport runway, a maneuver that you can tackle after you\u2019ve mastered several water landings. It\u2019s a bit trickier since it requires more precision and knowledge about crosswinds.\n <\/p>\n \n At this point, if I owned this plane, I\u2019d hook it up to a trailer, fold the wings up, drive it home, and park it in the garage.\n <\/p>\n \n If you want your own ICON A5, get in line. More than 1,800 customers have put deposits down.\n <\/p>\n \n For those who aren\u2019t ready to shell out $207,000 to buy one, there\u2019s the option of stopping by ICON\u2019s training facility in Tampa, or the facility in Vacaville, California, to fly for the day.\n <\/p>\n \n The Sport Flying Introduction class is 1.5 hours for $595. To snag your Sport Pilot License, you will need to spend 20-plus hours and pricing varies.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u0627\u0644\u0645\u0635\u062f\u0631<\/a> Story highlights The intuitive amphibious ICON A5 looks like a sports car It does require a sports pilot license to fly it Tampa, Florida CNN \u00a0\u2014\u00a0 When it comes to piloting a plane, I have zero experience. In fact, I\u2019ve never even considered attempting it. Nevertheless, as we swoop over Florida\u2019s Tampa Bay on a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7710],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37854","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-7710"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37854","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37854"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37854\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37854"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37854"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/estaql.com\/seo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37854"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n Tampa, Florida<\/span>
\n CNN<\/span>
\n \u00a0\u2014\u00a0
\n <\/cite>\n<\/p>\n\n\nPersonal airplane revolution<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\u0623\u062e\u0628\u0627\u0631<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"