Quote Originally Posted by FloridaJohn View Post
I am not convinced that their admittedly unique wing design will result in a substantially safer airplane.
Can someone explain to this poor, knuckle-dragging EE what it is about the wing design that supposed to be safer than other aircraft? The "Design" section of the Icon web page doesn't seem to have any technical information.

Quote Originally Posted by FloridaJohn View Post
The majority of airplane accidents are caused by loss of control during landing (runway overruns, ground loops, pilot induced oscillations, hard landings, etc.). You also have stupid pilot tricks like running out of gas and VFR into IMC. I don't see the design of the Icon resolving any of those issues.
Absolutely. I've got a database of nearly 3,000 homebuilt accidents, and structural failure of the airframe only caused 26 of them. That's about 0.8% of accidents, vs. the about 50% for pilot error cases. About half the airframe cases involved wing failure, and most of those were related to aerobatics, improper construction, or VFR into IFR conditions.

Ron Wanttaja