Tampa, Fla. (CNN) When it comes to flying a plane, I have no experience.
In fact, I haven’t even considered trying.
Yet as we fly over Florida’s Tampa Bay on a gorgeous November morning, I eagerly take the controls of the ICON A5, a two-seater amphibious aircraft that looks like a sports car, maneuvers like a jet ski, and is so intuitive that The company says that even a novice can learn to fly it in less than 30 hours.
At 23 feet long and weighing 1,510 pounds, it is known as a light sport sea plane.
Designed to help you focus on the freedom of flying without worrying if the plane will react unpredictably, there’s nothing like it on the market.
Now that I’m in control, my whole body tenses up for five minutes. Am I really ready to pilot this shiny new machine by myself? I’m not entirely sure.
However, I take solace in the fact that the A5 was built specifically for people like me, and was designed to drive like a car.
Also, the fact that Icon CEO and founder Kirk Hawkins is next to me in the booth doesn’t hurt either. He can take over the controls at any time.
So far so good.
We glide smoothly through the air at about 1,000 feet, and I’m comfortable enough to take in the views. The charming Fort De Soto Park does not disappoint.
Dreamy scribbles of white dunes are surrounded by water that looks like it should be in the Caribbean.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge, with its series of long-span cables, is equally impressive.
The adrenaline keeps running. And as with most surreal experiences, it just keeps getting better.
For starters, there’s another ICON A5 to my left, which is exciting in itself. We’re flying in formation, and my job is to mimic your movements. You’d think this would be intimidating, but it’s not.
It’s just fun.
That’s music to Hawkins’ ears. He is the mastermind behind this novel aircraft, an idea that has been 10 years in the making.
As a former Air Force F-16 pilot and Stanford Business School graduate, he has focused most of his adult life on making sport flying available to the masses.
“The idea for us was to create an airplane where the average human being could go out and experience the world without having the burden of becoming a professional pilot,” he says.
So it makes sense that the dash would look like what you see in your car. There are only a few calibers that I don’t recognize.
“It’s the Apple approach to things,” he says. “You humanize it and make it intuitive and easy and cool.”
He’s so sure that people will want to fly (and buy) his planes that he’s just opened a flight training center at Peter O. Knight Airport.
Located on Davis Island, five minutes from downtown Tampa, it is a place where beauty and sailboats abound.
The company’s other training center is in Vacaville, California, where ICON is headquartered.
Wide eyes and open windows
At 9am, it’s time for a short pit stop for a water landing.
Hawkins takes the controls. I’ve been too busy learning to fly in formation (something non-pilots don’t try very often) and interviewing Hawkins to even think about learning how to make a water landing myself. It’s something that Hawkins tells me most people can master in about 30 minutes.
A few negative G’s and 360’s later and it becomes a fun roller coaster in the sky. Also, it’s an outdoor flight, so every once in a while I drop my arms. Just because I can.
A few hundred feet above the water, it’s easy to see a boater waving at us, a flock of pelicans, and even stingrays.
“We’re going to stop here and stop and step outside for a second,” he says.
Surely he is joking, right? But after landing the plane in the water, he takes off his seatbelt, and I realize he’s not.
Seconds later, he opens the roof and we climb onto the wings, which could easily double as diving boards. Suddenly this feels less like a plane ride and more like you’re out on a boat soaking up the sun.
Everything is drenched in a mesmerizing golden hue. I imagine having a picnic on the nearby beach. Or catching the plane somewhere for a remote weekend camping trip.
Because the plane has a range of about 430 miles on a full tank, it’s made for short getaways.
“This is all about inspiring people,” he explains. “Once you learn to fly, you will never be the same. You will look at the sky differently, you will look at the planet differently.”
Designed to simplify flight
“The primary motor skills to operate an airplane are pretty easy,” Hawkins tells me. “We have people land on their own with an instructor on their first day, in 30 minutes.”
That being said, they have taken the time to design it for safety. The purpose of the spin resistant airframe feature is that if the pilot makes mistakes, the aircraft will not lose control.
As a backup, there is a full airplane parachute.
“The roll resistance feature is a big deal, as this is the first aircraft the FAA has found to be roll resistant,” says Chris Dupin, a flight instructor and US Air Force officer. “A significant amount of fatalities in general aviation are due to loss-of-control accidents involving an unrecovered turn on base through final turn.
Plus, there’s the angle of attack indicator, something you don’t normally see on a light aircraft. It shows you where the wing is happy (in green) or where it might stall (in red).
The pilot’s 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.
Become a barn
“Kirk Hawkins has an extremely creative and innovative idea for pilot training that is more intuitive; teaching the feel of flying first and principles and structure second, not unlike how people learn to drive,” says Christine Negroni, veteran aviation journalist and author of “The Accident Detectives.”
“The world is facing a pilot shortage, so the idea of teaching differently, so that different learning styles can be accommodated, could very well broaden the pool of pilot candidates.”
In that sense, about 40% of the people who have made deposits for the ICON A5 are not pilots, which means that this plane is attracting aviation newbies.
After an hour and a half of flight time, Hawkins lands us on the airport runway, a maneuver you can pull off after you’ve mastered several water landings. It is a bit more complicated as it requires more precision and knowledge about crosswinds.
At this point, if I owned this plane, I would hook it up to a trailer, fold the wings, drive it home, and park it in the garage.
Get some airtime
If you want your own ICON A5, stand in line. More than 1,800 clients have made deposits.
For those not ready to shell out $207,000 to purchase one, there is the option of stopping by ICON’s training facility in Tampa, or the facility in Vacaville, California, to fly for the day.
The Introduction to Sport Flight class is 1.5 hours for $595. To get your sport pilot license you will need to spend 20+ hours and prices vary.
Sarah Sekula is an Orlando-based travel writer and video host. She follows the adventures of her @wordzilla and @wordzillapics.
