Cirrus to supply airframes for California airplane manufacturer

Cirrus Aircraft will become one of the key strategic supplier partners for the ICON A5 amphibious Light Sport Aircraft, the two companies announced Monday.

Duluth-based Cirrus, which manufactures the SR20 and SR22 lines of high-performance single-engine aircraft, will produce a significant portion of the composite airframe components for ICON Aircraft.

“Cirrus has a global reputation for producing truly outstanding composite aircraft structures,” Kirk Hawkins, founder and CEO of ICON Aircraft, said in the announcement. “Their extensive experience, specifically in composite sandwich-production techniques, makes them an ideal production partner for ICON. We are thrilled that Cirrus is demonstrating their commitment to growing aviation at the consumer entry point through this collaboration with ICON. The core capabilities of ICON and Cirrus are highly complementary, and this new pairing creates extraordinary potential for the future of aviation.”

All composite structures produced by Cirrus for ICON will be made in the Cirrus Grand Forks factory. Using the composite assemblies supplied by Cirrus and other firms, ICON will control all design, system integration, final assembly, finishing and testing at its facility in Tehachapi, Calif. Composite component production will begin at the end of 2012, and the first production aircraft will be completed in the summer of 2013.

“The ICON A5 is certainly the most innovative LSA on the market, and we’re delighted to be able to play a meaningful role in bringing it to production,” said Dale Klapmeier, CEO of Cirrus Aircraft. “We believe that Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) and Sport Pilots are critically important to the growth and future of aviation. Cirrus and ICON share the common vision that exciting, innovative and safe new aircraft are a key to unlocking the enormous potential within our industry. ICON has hit the nail on the head with the A5, and we’re excited to combine Cirrus’ 15-plus years of world-class composite aircraft development and production experience with ICON’s truly exceptional consumer product design and engineering abilities.”

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