A 2004 regulatory change by the Federal Aviation Adminstration (FAA) that created an entirely new Light Sport Aircraft category and new Sport Pilot License was a dream come true for Kirk Hawkins (MS 1995 Eng, MS 2005 Business). Hawkins is a man passionate about engineering, business, sports and recreation, as well as flying just about everything that can stay aloft. He wasted no time in creating a company, ICON Aircraft, to create stylish new sport planes for this new category of flying. Hardly a daredevil enthusiast’s plane, the ICON A5 is designed from the start to be a sophisticated consumer aircraft: friendly, approachable, safe, and (as airplanes go) affordable ($139,000 estimated price). Announced this June, the company has since taken more than 200 orders for the A5. The flying prototype aircraft just made its maiden test flight this July, ICON plans to deliver the first production aircraft starting in late 2010. Hawkins said he gained invaluable insights into what it takes to make great consumer products while getting his master's in engineering at Stanford. Hawkins took several classes from Stanford’s Product Design Program while earning his master's in the Manufacturing Systems Engineering program, directed by Professor David Beach. Both Beach and Professor David Kelley currently serve on the Board of Advisors for ICON.
So what was the origin of the idea?
In 2004, the FAA and Department of Transportation (DOT) passed major regulation changes that created an entirely new class of sport flying aircraft and a Sport Pilot License that allows flying to be much more accessible to the mainstream public. Without those major rule changes, ICON wouldn’t exist. The new rules essentially created a new category of recreational flying, where you fly during the day, in good weather, and in uncongested 
airspace. It’s ingenious what the FAA has done. It now gives the consumer a much more accessible starting point to safely learn to fly. ICON is focused entirely on delivering aircraft specifically designed for this new sport-flying category. During business school, we carefully analyzed these major changes and came to the conclusion that there was a huge opportunity to develop a great consumer brand entirely around this new category of sport aircraft. To accomplish that, we’ve taken what I’d consider a very “Apple-like” approach to the process. We worked exceptionally hard to both understand the consumer markets and then to carefully identify the “total user experience” they’re looking for in a product. Then, by bringing together some of the best and brightest industrial designers with some of the world’s best aircraft engineers, we were able to design and build a truly exceptional consumer sport plane: one that is safe, fun, easy to fly, and very, very cool. Our goal is to create sport planes that our customers literally fall in love with. This is exactly the process that is taught in the Stanford Product Design Department. In fact, ICON’s co-founder and VP of Design, Steen Strand, received his master's in product design at Stanford in 1995 and has since taught in the program. In many ways, ICON is the embodiment of much what is taught at Stanford in the business school, engineering school, product design, and manufacturing programs.
How is that approach manifested in the plane itself?
One of the things that makes this airplane stand out from most airplanes is that it is truly designed as a consumer product. So when you look at the cockpit, if you are a world-class aviator and you’ve flown the things that I have had the good fortune of flying, from F-16s to 767 airliners, you’ll go, “Wow! This is exactly what I need.” It’s very well laid out, very intuitive, and for pure sport performance flying, it gives the most elite pilot exactly what they need, in the right hierarchy. But if you have no flying experience whatsoever, and you walk up and look in the A5 cockpit, you’re not going to feel like you are looking into the front of a 737. It looks surprisingly familiar. It is very automotive-like and is laid out in such a way that communicates to you, “I can do this.” And these kinds of things don’t happen by accident. Apple’s iPod does a bunch of computer-like things, but it does it in a way that is very intuitive. You don’t get there with just straight functional engineering, and you don’t achieve it with just straight design. You have to get both of these going and have a very good understanding of the human interface. A lot of intelligent design has gone into this vehicle’s cockpit.
So, where can the plane go?
The amphibious aircraft we’ve designed is land and water capable. It can go from airport to airport. It can go from airport to grass strip, from airport to road, backcountry road or ranch or farm, whatever. It takes less than 750 feet to land and take off. It can also fly onto lakes and land on the water. So it’s extremely versatile, an off-road vehicle for the sky, and probably 90 percent of the U.S. airspace below a couple thousand feet is completely wide open and available to sport flying. It’s only in the few miles directly around a major airport where it gets relatively congested and the airspace is tightly controlled. Depending on your pilot qualifications, you may need additional training to fly into controlled airspace, like Palo Alto or San Francisco.
And there are several safety features?
Safety and your comfort level in operating a vehicle largely have to do with your confidence and your ability to assimilate the information. When you sit in it, when you grab the vehicle controls, when you look at the instrumentation, you ask, “Is this confusing to me?” or, “Do I get it?” And to the extent that you sit in that cockpit and say, “I get this,” you will be confident and you will be safe. Step one is giving people confidence and the right information, and the cockpit does that, so the average person can easily fly. Another major safety feature is an ICON complete airplane parachute. It is a rocket-launched parachute that is attached to the airframe, and it launches in a matter of seconds. It’s off-the-shelf, plug-and-play technology that’s proven and cost effective. You could conceivably have something catastrophic occur, and you could fire this parachute, and in a matter of two or three seconds, the parachute stops the airplane, lets it down under canopy, and people walk away from it. The technology has saved about 200 aircraft and counting since they introduced it 20 years ago. Another significant safety feature that is very unique to aviation is the propeller guard, which ICON has patented. The prop tips are really the most dangerous part of the airplane to humans, especially when the aircraft is in a consumer recreational environment. So we are putting a protective shield of sorts around the propeller to minimize that danger of inadvertently coming into contact with the propeller.
Meanwhile, it’s also portable in that the wings fold up?
For an aircraft to be a consumer product, it can’t be tied to the airport. Look at all the powersport vehicles out there: boats, jet skis, ATV’s, snowmobiles, and even high-end sports cars. These sport vehicles are intended for recreation, not transportation. And the people that buy these do so for the fun, the excitement, and the adventure. What drives these designs is different from what drives functional transportation. What they have in common is that they are all transportable. You take them with you when you go somewhere. A core part of the ICON philosophy is to make this vehicle both accessible (where you can easily get access to it, afford it, and learn to fly it) and transportable, so that you can take it with you.
All this comes from a deep, personal interest in flying?
I’ve had the good fortune of having a really deep domain background in flying. I just had a fascination as a kid with airplanes. So I was designing and building model planes, and I got my license to start flying when I was seventeen, flying sail planes. In college I bought an ultra-light and built it and I was flying that on weekends. After my master's in engineering at Stanford in 1995, I went into the Air Force and flew F-16s. Then afterwards, I flew 757s and 767s for American Airlines. Therefore, I’ve had the good fortune of flying everything from the smallest wings all the way up to the biggest wings. It was because of that unique experience that I developed an understanding of the entire range of flying and what each of these aircraft offer. With that experience, combined with my powersport recreational background, I saw the connection that certain types of flying share with other types of very popular activities. Flying offers the exact same experience as motorcycles, Jet Skis, sports cars, and dirt bikes, but takes it to the third dimension. I understood that there was something intrinsically very exciting and valuable about aviation that was not being offered to the mainstream public in the way that other consumer products were. I knew that it was the regulatory environment that was keeping those two worlds apart. Well, that regulation went away, and I happened to be in the right place at the right time where I saw that coming.
