An epic saga

The Epic’s semi-elliptical, laminar flow wings have swept leading edges and straight trailing edges. The airplane is equipped with both a stick shaker that activates at about 80 KIAS and is accompanied by visual and aural warnings and a stick pusher designed to prevent an aerodynamic stall that kicks in at 70 KIAS.

An angle-of-attack gauge is prominently placed in the “wedge”—a cleverly recessed portion of the panel atop the primary flight display that allows pilots to see the critical information displayed there when looking forward out the windshield.

There’s no autothrottle in the Epic so it lacks a required element of the Garmin Autoland system. An automated emergency descent profile is built into the autopilot, but on this flight we make it happen by hand.

The Epic handles with a crisp and satisfying mix of stability and responsiveness. There’s no apparent adverse yaw, and pitch and roll forces are beautifully balanced and harmonized.The descent can be astonishingly quick. With landing gear and flaps up, pull the throttle to idle and pitch the nose down about 30 degrees. There are no speed brakes to deploy. Just let the 105-inch-diameter propeller flatten out and keep the airspeed from exceeding the airplane’s 270-KIAS maximum operating speed while the Epic drops at 6,000 feet per minute or more. At 2,000 feet msl and a couple miles offshore, we level off, reactivate the GFC 700 autopilot, and program the G1000NXi to fly the RNAV Runway 9 approach at CGC. The descent and prelanding checklists are logical and easy to follow, and the pilot has plenty of time to make power and configuration changes as the approach progresses. With the autopilot handling the elevator trim, the airplane shows no tendency to sink or balloon during landing gear extension or flap deployment.

With the autopilot in Approach mode, it follows the vertical and lateral GPS guidance to the decision altitude while the pilot simply modulates the power lever for the desired airspeed.

Mid-day heating makes the air choppy below 1,500 feet as I hand fly the final segment of the approach. At touchdown, the Epic’s trailing link landing gear are exceptionally forgiving, and pulling the power lever back over the gate to Beta or reverse allows for rapid deceleration with little or no wheel braking.

A tangled web

For such an elegant airplane, the Epic’s origin story is astonishingly messy and convoluted—even by aviation’s sometimes murky standards.

The airplane was designed in 2004 and brought to market by Fred E. “Rick” Schrameck, who envisioned an entire family of large, sleek, composite turboprop and jet aircraft made from kits. Epic attracted dozens of buyers with the promise of a clean-sheet, carbon-fiber, pressurized, and powerful design that could do more and cost less than any comparable FAA-certified aircraft. Five years after Epic started, however, the company was deeply in debt and not paying its bills. Subsequently, it sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy court protection in 2009.

Schrameck was removed as CEO before the company declared bankruptcy, and the Justice Department charged him with wire fraud in 2015 for illegally using aircraft deposits to fund his lavish lifestyle and unrelated projects. Schrameck pleaded guilty to wire fraud in 2018 and served prison time.

Meanwhile, Epic builders, including current CEO Doug King, banded together to produce parts that would allow them to complete and maintain the kit airplanes they had already purchased. The company bought the assets from the bankruptcy, resumed kit sales, and expanded to take over the composite manufacturing center in Bend, Oregon, where the Cessna Corvalis had been produced until 2009.

The next year, Russia-born oligarch Vladislav Filev went for a demo flight with King and was so impressed he made plans to buy Epic and obtain FAA certification of the E1000 design. Filev owns S7 Airlines in Russia as well as other international firms. A Filev subsidiary, Engineering LLC, bought Epic in 2012 and started an FAA certification program that finally concluded in 2019 after seven years and many millions of dollars in expenditures. Epic was awarded an FAA production certificate in 2020 and expanded its staff to the current level of more than 450 workers. The Filev family now owns the company through a Cyprus-based firm. . There’s been tragedy along the way, too. Filev’s wife, Natalia; her father; and a Russian pilot were killed in the crash of an experimental-category Epic LT in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2019. German officials attributed it to pilot error resulting in a loss of aircraft control. About 50 Epics were built and licensed under the experimental category, and 59 have been manufactured as certified aircraft since then.

An absolute blast

In the increasingly competitive single-engine, six-seat turboprop category, the Epic E1000 GX is a showstopper. It’s bigger, faster, and flies higher than its competitors while providing superior cabin comfort. It’ll appeal to wealthy individuals for personal use and corporate flight departments for executive travel.

Common-sense upgrades in future models that can make it even better include a Garmin G3000 avionics suite to replace the current G1000NXi system and perhaps Autoland to match Piper’s M700 Fury and Daher’s TBM 900 series. Those aren’t original ideas—Epic’s rivals have already adopted them.

Yet Epic’s ownership is problematic. So far, under the Filevs’ ownership the company has paid U.S. salaries, modernized an Oregon manufacturing plant, and created hundreds of American jobs. But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, awful and still deteriorating bilateral relations, and deepening financial sanctions against Vladamir Putin’s regime and its enablers can’t help but cast a shadow over Epic.

I spoke with a recent Epic buyer who is thrilled with the fit and finish of his airplane, the factory training he received, the technical support his airplane gets at one of a dozen U.S. service centers, and the stellar performance his aircraft delivers. He’s a career professional pilot who researched every aspect of his new aircraft—except its ties to Russia. When informed, he considered those aspects for a moment and quickly made his peace with it.

“If the devil himself was selling Epics, I’d still want one,” he said, “The airplane is just that good.”