Roy Halladay's 'Sports Car With Wings' Tied To At Least 3 Deaths

VACAVILLE, CA — Former MLB great Roy Halladay was killed Tuesday in an Icon A5, a small plane he bought last month that has been involved in at least two other crashes in the last year, including one that left two of the company's workers dead. Halladay's aircraft — an amphibious airplane that CNN dubbed a "sports car with wings" — was the first of its model year 2018 and went down in the Gulf of Mexico north of Holiday, Florida.

Icon's lead aeronautical engineer, Jon Karkow, and colleague Cagri Sever were both killed in an A5 plane crash May 8. The National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB, faulted pilot error after Krakow flew too low near Icon’s headquarters in Vacaville, California.

"It is likely that the pilot mistakenly thought the canyon that he entered was a different canyon that led to the larger, open portion of the lake," the report said.

An A5 plane also crashed near Miami last year, Flying Magazine reported.

Icon has faced questions for its "aggressive low-level maneuvers" in promotional videos for the $389,000 plane, which is "now entering full-rate production" following 10 years of development, the magazine said.

An Icon spokesperson told Patch they're still gathering information about the Halladay crash and declined to comment further.

The NTSB is in the early stages of its investigation, Chief of Media Relations Christopher O'Neil told Patch in an email. Aviation crash investigations usually take a year to two years to complete, he said.

"Our focus at this time is on this accident and understanding the circumstances surrounding it," said O'Neil.

Investigative work at the crash site is usually finished in several days and a preliminary report typically is issued 10 days thereafter, he said.

In a since deleted promotional video posted by Icon to YouTube on Oct. 12, Halladay said he always wanted to be a pilot but never got the chance. While an MLB player though, he was contractually barred from getting his pilot’s license, a description for the video said.

"This is your baby. 0-0-1 out of 100, Founders Edition," an Icon worker can be heard telling Halladay in the video.

"That is pretty cool. To think that I get to take that home is pretty surreal," Halladay said.

Brandy Halladay, Roy's wife, said in the video that she was reluctant to take to the skies.

"She fought me the whole way," he said.

"I fought hard," she said. "I was very against it."

But then she took flight in the A5.

"I looked over at him, and I said, 'OK, I get it. This is amazing"" she said. "You forget that you're in a plane."

She added: "Now that we're going to have one, I'm really excited."

Roy Halladay became the owner of a "particularly significant" A5 in October, the video description said. It wasn't immediately clear if the plane in the video is the same plane that Halladay was killed in.

The essential mechanical structure, the airframe, in Halladay's A5 plane was the first to be built at Icon's new Baja, California, composites manufacturing plant, the company noted. It specified that Halladay's plane bore the serial number 22; it was the "first Founders Edition aircraft."

While Icon took down the video from its own site, you can watch it via Storyful News, which said the video was uploaded for use by its subscription clients "with the permission of the content owner."

Watch: Pitcher Roy Halladay In ICON A5 Plane He Promoted in October

Patch reporter Cody Fenwick contributed to this report.

Photo credit: YouTube screenshot