Video: ICON A5 Light Sport Aircraft
Inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen (Segway) and correspondent Joanne Colan highlight the ICON A5 in the “Future Flight” episode of Planet Green’s original series, Dean of Invention (on iTunes), which focuses on technology and innovation with the potential to reinvent the future. From the video:
Getting to California from the East Coast proves, once and for all, flying has lost its mojo. Endless lines, intrusive security screenings; this is the reality. But air travel doesn’t have to be this way — especially if you can do it yourself.
DIY aviation, anyone? Smells like aeropunk to me. (via ICON Aircraft)
EH. How’s that Foxjet? How’s Eclipse? Yet another method of transport that will be reserved to the select few, this is yet another toy, not a solution to our transportation needs. People still have to learn how to fly, regardless of a contrived, highly-controlled, no-wind, CAVU situation in the simulator. Most importantly, customers will have to learn or accept a level of responsibility that is not easily found in society-at-large, something that just isn’t going to happen. Aviation now weeds out the unfit or those without the appropriate mental temperament, starting on the ground at the FBO with the instructor, and getting stricter and more refined as we go up the professional ladder.
If this project, or other similar to it, succeed, we will see more criminal prosecutions to curb yahoo-esque behavior because just suspending a certificate and hoping the punishee has the honor to not jump back in the plane isn’t going to cut it when no one shoulders blame for their own actions. D.K. might like to think that it would be freedom for everyone to leave from their house and fly wherever, but as with most musings, this is spoken from the convenient perspective of the present. He conveniently forgets that the same clusterF appears with every new form of individualized transport. He’s living in a dreamland. Imagine a couple million of these commuting in and out of Megalopolis and it won’t be freedom anymore, but yet another reason to increase regulations and make something even more expensive.
The Light Sport is very popular, and that is great! But a transportation solution? No, unless we go to a level of automation that had yet to be invented* — one that can make value based decisions rather than the crap-in/crap-out automation we have today — which will then take the freedom that D.K. pines for out of it.
*Unless you count trains, which almost all of the First World has embraced as a very effective, clean, quick, safe solution at moving large masses of people over any sort of distance. There was a time when the US had a train system envied by the world, connecting almost everytown in the nation, with trains that sped between NYC, PHL, and DCA faster in the 50′s than the “high-speed” Acela today… and we let it decay to our everlasting shame, or at least my everlasting shame.
@Christophe: Recently, EAA’s Sport Aviation magazine has been running columns about the declining pilot population and ways to combat this, with programs like Young Eagles and the new sport pilot rating. Although there are clearly multiple factors at play, I personally think you’ve hit on one of the major reasons that aviation is dying — it’s just too hard to learn, it takes too long, and requires too much acceptance of personal responsibility. The mobile phone industry no doubt spends billions trying to perfect their products, and people still can’t seem to figure out how to use them, nor do they seem willing to accept that the latest smart phones still won’t make lunch for you.
I agree that high-speed rail is a better solution to our mass transportation problems than personal aviation, but there’s still a part of me that would like to believe that there should be options — good options — for the select few who are willing to put in the time and effort needed to learn to fly, to have their own aircraft and bypass the Orwellian madness that commercial air transport has become.
I think it’s only going to get worse, and I always love reading comments from the Van’s Air Force community about how, economical or not, they’ll take their own plane over the airline “experience” any day. I’d like to help protect this freedom, and grow it as much as possible, so that the airline juggernauts don’t get their wish and strongarm general aviation into obscurity. Personal flight may never be fit for the masses, but I still think its existence is vital.
I agree unequivocally with you on the issues you raised, across the board. Sport pilot ratings are fantastic, my local FBO has received a large amount of interest, and other FBO’s in the region are making money on growing programs. The increasing technology, increasing speed, and all around versatility of LSA’s is fantastic news. For the first time in years the GA industry actually is producing new products and pushing the technology forward, and might make some money to boot. This is essential to the survivability of GA, and I am on board. The more the merrier and the stronger we all will be!
My only beef with the video is Dean’s dreamscape that a flying machine in every garage is the epitome of freedom, and Mr. F16 (with his undeniably cool aircraft) and the hostess misleading the public into thinking that any yahoo can fly an airplane. All you need is an airplane, intuition, and a parachute! “Nailed it!” she says. Yeah, Mr. F16 was saying the same thing the next morning.
On a sidenote, Mythbusters did something similar, “can a passenger be talked down to land an airliner” or some similar level of baloney. Woah! Lo and behold the guy landed it! Except, again, we’re talking a highly contrived situation, CAVU, day, no wind. I mean, our C.P. when we first got the Dash couldn’t even find the mic jack– imagine the helpless pax strapping into a 76 and trying to find: The headset, jack, radio, frequency… I rest my case. My point is that this kind of dialogue reduces airline pilots to just a symbolic role, and it reduces GA pilots to flying baboons who don’t know better and who obviously need to be regulated out of the sky.
I would have liked it if the piece at least had a disclosure, especially from Mr. F16 who should know better: “It’s not for everyone, but if you study hard, take responsibility, and are willing to accept a challenge, you will be rewarded with this awesome transportation model.”
I guess that big job of just stating that introductory sentence will be up to the lowly CFI, as always, who shapes future pilots.