The Flying Car

Private aviation today is causing a continuing decline in the pilot population and an increase in community attempts to close small airports.

As I see it there are two factors that cause this decline:

1. Airplanes are too expensive for a large part of the general population to afford, particularly considering their utility.

2. The dependable cross country transportation capability that this population would expect from an airplane, is not available without prohibitively expensive training and equipment enabling highly skilled flight under instrument conditions. (IFR)

As a result of the above, the average traveler has, in the past, used his automobile for most travel and the airlines when he had a long distance to go; in today's airline market he has done the same when he has considerably more money and spare time to do it.

Let's take a look at the appeal of the automobile. For years it has been able to take people where they want to go: door to door at reasonable cost, in all types of weather, any time of day, and at the skill level of the average person. Can you imagine how many cars would be on the road in bad weather, if the driver had to get instrument qualified in airplane style in order to drive?

What alternatives are there? What if you could get a very high mileage ground vehicle that could fly when the weather was good and drive when the weather conditions prohibited flying? This is exactly what a roadable aircraft (flying car) will do!

Not only that, but because it is necessarily very light and streamlined in order to fly well it will provide a road vehicle that will travel well over twice the distance on a gallon of gas that any popular car will today. You not only get to fly at aircraft speeds in good weather, but you always have an economical and environmentally sound second road vehicle for family use. Using current light aircraft usage statistics the driving will constitute 95% of the total vehicle usage and flying 5% Raise this to 10% flying and you will be allowing for more frequent airborne usage with current airline flight cancellations and higher fares. This is the reason the driving portion of the roadable aircraft is so important.

Believe it or not, the skill level for good weather flying is very close to that for driving. The new Light Sport Airplane FAA specs call for just 20 hours total time in the aircraft before you are ready to make trips on your own, just about the same time a responsible parent would require of a new driver in the family.