Let's fantasize a little: It's the Friday afternoon of a long weekend. The roads are jammed, so driving from Manhattan to your vacation home in Massachusetts' Berkshire hills will take hours. The airports are going to be mobbed, too. But the Hudson River dock where you park your seaplane is walking distance from the office. You get in, start her up and take off.
While this may sound improbable, it isn't completely outlandish, thanks to a newish class of diminutive, two-seat aircraft known as light-sport planes. In addition to being easier to fly than many of the traditional small planes that have been on the market for decades, a few of these newcomers have been bestowed with superpowers of the aviation world. There's the ICON A5, which can take off and land on water as well as paved runways and grass. A flying car called the Transition, slated for release in a year or two (if all goes as planned), promises to eliminate the hassle of renting a car at your destination since, after you land, you can drive away in this aircraft. And the SuperSTOL, an old-fashioned-looking plane with a fabric-covered steel-tube frame, may eliminate the need for airports altogether. It can take off and land in relatively tight spaces—"runways" as short as 150 feet long, instead of the 2,000 feet or more required by similarly sized planes.
Light-sport aircraft have been around for more than a decade. They cater to pilots with a "starter" license that the Federal Aviation Administration introduced in 2004, part of an effort, hashed out with pilots' groups and plane manufacturers, to make personal-air travel more accessible. A light-sport license is considerably easier to acquire than a traditional private-pilot certificate: It requires about half as many hours of training—roughly 20 hours—which also makes it less costly. (Budget about $4,000 to $6,000 if you want one.) Of course, there are restrictions: You can only fly during daylight in good weather, not in conditions that call for flight instruments (foggy or cloudy skies, for example). Also, the weight and power of your plane cannot exceed set limits, and it can carry no more than two people.
Granted, flying your own plane isn't as safe as flying commercial. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the fatality rate for small private planes in 2010 (the latest year available) was 2.09 deaths per 100,000 hours flown. The fatality rate for commercial air travel that year is tallied differently—0.02 deaths per 100,000 aircraft departures—but was clearly lower.
Risk notwithstanding, I took my first flying lessons in 1988, long before the light-sport trend got off the ground. Even though I have the more advanced private-pilot license today, a handful of companies are trying to lure weekend pilots like me into their plane's cockpits, not just with the speed and thrill of flying but with the ability to land closer to their destinations—or even, in the case of the Transition, to drive their planes directly there.
Terrafugia, based in Woburn, Mass., hatched its plan for the Transition flying car a decade ago, after pegging the nation's 5,000 small public airports as some of our most underused resources. "The disadvantage with general-aviation airports is that they tend to be in out-of-the-way places where you need a car to get to your final destination," said Carl Dietrich, who serves as both CEO and CTO of the company. "We designed the Transition to cover what we like to call 'the last mile.'"
In fact, a fully fueled Transition is designed to be able to cover hundreds of miles on land or fly up to 400 miles. According to Mr. Dietrich, the $299,000 vehicle was intended to give beginner pilots the option of driving when inclement weather makes flying unsafe. Its 100-horsepower engine, which powers the wheels in car mode and the rear-facing propeller in plane mode, is a popular design from Austrian company Rotax. (All of the aircraft mentioned above use similar engines from Rotax). The Transition was scheduled to go on sale a few years ago but has been plagued by production and funding delays. Terrafugia has given numerous demonstration flights, however, and the Transition does fly and drive.
The more conventional-looking SuperSTOL, which costs around $135,000 and is available now, solves a different problem: Having enough space to land. Its solution is to rethink the landing process. Large adjustable flaps at the rear of the wings and extensions on the leading edges expand the wings' surface area as needed, letting them function almost like parachutes. This allows the SuperSTOL to descend steeply if slowly—like a gently falling leaf—thus reducing the size of the runway required. Outsize landing gear with monster-truck-style shock absorbers and fat tires let the plane simply plop down without leveling off for a long touchdown, as conventional planes must do. The special wing also gives the SuperSTOL enough lift to take off from fields that seem impossibly short.
But among the latest designs, the ICON A5 is the only one designed to take off from water—a boon for people with shorefront homes: Imagine touching down 100 yards off shore and taxiing up to your lake house. (Just be sure to check local ordinances. Some lakes do not allow seaplanes while others require pilots to also have boating licenses. And laws about landing an aircraft in your yard—even your extremely large one—do vary.)
I only fully understood the potential for such a landing when I took an A5 for a test flight from New York's Hudson River with ICON founder (and former fighter pilot) Kirk Hawkins. Rather than the steering-wheel-like yoke found in many modern aircraft, the A5 has a control stick on each side of the cockpit and a T-shaped throttle handle on a console in the center—a configuration many flying purists (myself included) appreciate because it feels more like a fighter plane. The layout of the A5's flight instruments is a beginner's dream. Airspeed, altitude and engine gauges are easy to read and set in a carlike dashboard.
With its removable side windows taken out, flying in the A5 felt like a Piper Cub, a celebrated small plane designed in the 1930s that can be flown with its windows and doors open. The A5's large windshield gives a wide view that made spotting potential hazards easier as we flew up and down the Hudson, where airspace is often as crowded as the river itself. I had no trouble viewing the helicopters and sightseeing planes vying for a closer look at the Statue of Liberty.
Between my stints at the controls, Mr. Hawkins took over to demonstrate the A5's maneuverability. He pulled the plane into a steep nose-up attitude that would cause a typical small plane to stall and drop sharply or even fall into a deadly spin. But the A5 just plowed along. Eventually it began to descend, but slowly enough that most pilots would have time to lower the plane's nose, pick up speed and return to normal flight.
'A light-sport license is easier to acquire than a private-pilot certificate: It requires roughly 20 hours of training.'
Over the Hudson, the A5 cruised along at about 95 miles an hour, which feels fast in the small plane—the way a tiny Mazda Miata feels racy going 50 mph—but it is in fact slower than the Cessna that I regularly rent. And the A5's sticker price of $189,000 might give potential buyers pause. While the tab for an A5 is modest compared with many brand-new planes, it is steep compared with the $30,000 price tag of a decent 30- to 40-year-old Cessna 172, which can carry a family of four. (Indeed, my need to fly with my wife and our two sons was the reason I opted to get a private pilot's license instead of a light-sport.) That said, the A5 and other light-sport planes are much less expensive to run than standard aircraft. The A5 burns 3.8 gallons of fuel per hour, which is pretty miserly. (Aviation fuel costs about $5 per gallon for a total of about $19 per hour. The A5 can also use premium automotive gasoline, which at the current national average of $2.79 comes to about $11 per hour.)
And the A5 is zippy and undeniably fun to fly. As I soared over the traffic-choked George Washington Bridge, lined up the A5 for a landing and set it down gently on Hudson, I couldn't help imagining doing the same thing at Martha's Vineyard, Block Island or one of the thousands of lakes and rivers across the U.S.
My family and I would just have to trade our standard road-trip song, "Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer," for "Up Where We Belong."
Up, Up and Away... SomedayThree highflying, two-seat wonders that may be coming soon to a sky near you
THE ECO-FRIENDLY CHOPPER: Volocopter VC200
With 18 propellers, the drone-like VC200 will be able to take off and land vertically like a helicopter, yet is designed to be easier to fly, according to e-volo, the German company behind the battery-powered aircraft. The VC200 is steered by joystick and doesn't require foot pedals, as a helicopter does; it will also stay aloft should some of its propellers fail. The current prototype can fly for 20 minutes—a stat that is expected to get more impressive as battery technology improves. A manned test-flight is scheduled for later this year. Production is slated for 2017.
THE ELECTRIC PLANE: E-Fan 2.0
The France-based Airbus Group is spearheading a family of electric-powered aircraft, dubbed the E-Fan program, that will consume no fuel, emit no CO2 or NOx emissions and will be substantially quieter than gas-powered airplanes. The E-Fan 2.0 will be a two-seater version, and although it won't be available until late 2017, the underlying technology is real. This summer, the E-Fan 1.0, powered by lithium-ion batteries, became the first twin-engine electric plane to cross the English Channel.
AND ANOTHER FLYING CAR: AeroMobil 3.0
The Slovakian company AeroMobil is developing a flying car that is functionally similar to Terrafugia's Transition—but visually, it's a svelte dragonfly to Terrafugia's bumblebee. AeroMobil's makers say the car will be able to take off and land on short, moderately rough fields. However, it is not as far along as the Transition in gaining government certification in Europe. The company said it plans to start deliveries in two to three years.
COFFEE, TEA OR FREEDOM?In the not-too-distant future, you'll be able to take off from the comfort of your driveway. Here's how that might compare to air travel today.
Departure Mindset
Baggage Strategy
Check-in Requirements
Screening Process
Boarding Rules
Flight Delays
Seating Options
Onboard Entertainment
—Keith Blanchard
Source: Forget Flying Commercial: The Personal Airplane Is Taking Off
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