Zapata EzFly: The 'Segway of the Skies' that Anybody can Fly. But Will Lawmakers Allow it?

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In the past I've covered the rapidly expanding number of variations on manned multicopters being built by amateurs these days. Cause for celebration in some camps, and consternation in others.

Celebration because the accelerating march of technology is quickly bringing affordable personal VTOL travel within our reach. Consternation because of what it'll be like when the idiots on the road today who can't even drive cars properly are entrusted to pilot an aircraft in 3 dimensions.

Personally I don't think it'll be such a big problem after having seen ten volunteers with no prior training learn how to fly the EzFly...by hopping on it and taking to the skies. That's what differentiates this from all the other compact flying machines I covered in the prior article. That, and the lack of exposed spinning blades.

The EzFly utilizes miniature jet engines originally developed for high end hobby RC aircraft. That two of them can lift a person is a testament to their incredible thrust. The power to weight ratio of jet engines is truly off the charts.

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Granted, the prices are exorbitant. But imagine telling somebody from 1950 that in the future, any private citizen can purchase a jet engine the size of a coke can. What's more, that two of them produce enough thrust to lift you off the ground.

Then again, given how optimistic science fiction of that era was, perhaps that wouldn't surprise them after all. Franky Zapata, inventor of the EzFly, previously performed many demonstration flights of an earlier prototype over various bodies of water.

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He dubbed this verion the "Flyboard Air". It required the pilot to wear a backpack full of fuel, which has since been integrated into the body of the EzFly. Not in any elegant way mind you, but simply by attaching the fuel backpack to the poles that the pilot holds onto.

Still, I don't report on just any compact flying machine anymore. What has me excited about this one is how compact it is, the lack of exposed spinning blades and the fact that it appears so intuitive to fly that just about anybody can learn by experience in a matter of minutes.

It would comfort me if there were some sort of safety measures. But a parachute won't do any good at the low altitudes this will fly at. You'd be dead by the time it opened. Some alternative (a full body airbag?) must be developed to increase survivability in the event of engine failure, or some other fault which results in an interruption of lift.

Then there's the legal barrier. We're at a point now where technology is no longer the barrier to achieving all of the wonderous gadgets promised to us by the science fiction of several decades ago. It's held back by law makers who don't want average people to have those technologies.

Progress is being made towards legal electric VTOL sky taxis on the condition that they be driverless. The EzFly is not. But then it's also sufficiently simple to operate that a regulation requiring it be piloted by computer would be pointless. Not that this has ever stopped lawmakers from banning anything which scares them, regardless of whether they have any firsthand experience with it.

Google's "Kitty Hawk" manned quadrotor is being legalized under the condition that it only ever operate over bodies of water, hence the pontoons on the bottom. Perhaps that's a viable path to legalization for the EzFly as well.

The purported flight time is 10 minutes, according to Franky Zapata himself. That's not much, but it's long enough to make short hops over natural obstacles like cliffs or trees that are impassable by car or on foot. One has to wonder how noisy it would be to have dozens of people zipping around overhead on these things, though.

My excitement is nevertheless undiminished, because this looks more than any of the other compact flying machines I've so far covered, like a viable consumer product. Something which delivers on the promise of personal flight in a form accessible to just about anyone.

More to come, watch this space.

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^{Stay Cozy!}