ICON Purchase Agreement Sparks Controversy

The agreement sets up a series of requirements that seems onerous and consumer-unfriendly. While some can be viewed as attempts by ICON to smartly limit its liability, others seem aimed to control the behavior of its customers in ways wholly unrelated to safety or liability. Here are the lowlights.

I understand that some of this is ICON's attempt, however tone-deaf and probably ultimately ill advised, to limit its product liability. The problem, of course, is that the agreement is so onerous and creepy, and because it introduces a great deal of cost uncertainty, that it's hard to imagine anyone signing it.

One manufacturer spoke to us off the record about the contract controversy and sympathized with ICON, which he said needs to present the contract language in very direct terms and then cannot comment on it for fear of those comments being used against them later in court, which makes sense.

Maybe there's a greater level of comfort with such contract language than I imagine. Perhaps many consumers will see it as just an expensive version of a cell phone service provider's pages-long agreement that all of us accept, but that none of us actually reads. In the case of the ICON A5 purchase agreement, however, a lot of folks have read it. And what we've seen is troubling on a variety of levels that will have life-of-ownership implications on the purchaser.

Moreover, it's hard for me to understand how, if product liability containment is the ultimate goal, a clause that seeks to stifle the consumer's free speech fits with that spin. It seems more like corporate culture to me than strategy. The clause is consistent with ICON's past attempts to control coverage and opinion. When it conducted its initial press event last summer, ICON required the media outlets covering the event (and flying the airplane) to agree to let ICON review and approve any stories that resulted before they could be published. It sought to guarantee a cover with the A5 on it in return for providing access to the airplane, and it required journalists to use only ICON's photography for the stories. The media outlet I headed at the time, along with a few others, told ICON that wasn't about to happen, and ICON, instead of settling for a poorly attended product launch, backed off the demands.

I'm curious to see how the purchase agreement goes over with ICON's customers. The company has said that if any prospective buyers want out, they'll give them a full refund of the initial deposit. Any progress payments, however, ICON will keep 20 percent of, which seems inconsistent. Why, after all, should one customer be allowed an easy exit once the agreement is unveiled while the other, more invested customer should pay a big fee? It makes no sense to me. Their issues with the agreement would hold equal weight regardless of how much they've already put down.

The airplane manufacturing business is not an easy one, and the problem of product liability is a tough nut to crack. But ICON's efforts, as reflected by this contract, go far beyond the liability issue. In many ways, it appears that ICON is attempting to make the aircraft manufacturing game a subscription model, as AT&T does with its cell service and Time Warner does with cable, and so on ad infinitum. The model is a tempting one, because instead of selling one thing once, you sell part of it again and again. By insisting upon owners using its service and flight training, as well as having their aircraft rebuilt on what seems to me to be a too-regular basis, ICON seems to be attempting to get paid again and again for a product its customers already bought, though it will seem to buyers, given this agreement, that it's ICON that still holds the keys.