Avilution and ICON Join to Provide a Breakthrough in Amphibian Aviation Safety

At the opening of the 73rd annual Experimental Aircraft Association’s AirVenture Exhibition, ICON Aircraft Company announced its partnership with Avilution and Skytron Avionics in launching ICON Sense, a next-generation flight safety system tailored specifically for the ICON A5 amphibious light sport aircraft. 

Mark Spencer flying his personal ICON A5 over Huntsville, AL.

Avilution applied its FAA-qualified eXtensible Flight System (XFS) avionics integration software to develop a next-generation crew-alerting system that dramatically increases the situation awareness of A5 pilots across a wide range of off-nominal conditions and emergencies. 

The highlight of these improved pilot aids is ICON Sense’s ability to predict when and where the pilot intends to land the aircraft, and if that landing surface will be on land or water. ICON Sense then confirms that the landing gear is in the proper position for the predicted landing surface and, if not, it provides an unmistakable verbal warning to the pilot in plenty of time to safely suspend the landing approach and reposition the landing gear.

By combining A5 avionics data (altitude, speed, descent rate, aircraft configuration, engine speed, etc.) with high-accuracy GPS information, global high-resolution water topography map data, and precision radar altimeter readouts, XFS’s software algorithms not only know where the A5 is, but where it will be when it lands on the surface ahead, and what type of surface that will be (water or land). This innovative approach fulfills ICON’s desire to provide more accurate and effective configuration warnings to the A5 pilot while greatly reducing the number of false or nuisance alarms that can desensitize aircrews to important alerts. Furthermore, ICON Sense will be made available as an upgrade to the existing A5 fleet in addition to future production aircraft. 

Avilution’s founder and owner, Mark Spencer, sees a need for wider adoption of improved pilot alerting systems for seaplanes, commenting, “Wrong-gear landings are the number one cause of fatal accidents in amphibious aircraft. We look forward to adapting our XFS technology to additional aircraft manufacturers’ needs.”