Personal Flight

A milestone for California's JetPack Aviation today. Six years after David Mayman's historic jetpack flight around the Statue of Liberty, the company has made its first two sales: a pair of 6-jet, 120 mph JB-12 jetpacks to an unnamed military buyer.

Japan's Tetra Aviation won a hundred-grand "disruptor award" at the GoFly personal flight contest last year, and has now presented its first commercial product at OshKosh: a 33-rotor Mk5 personal eVTOL it hopes to begin delivering to buyers in 2022.

After spending 18 months building an entirely new form of flight control software, California's Jetpack Aviation has finished flight testing the odd-looking first prototype of the Speeder, a high-speed, jet turbine-powered flying motorcycle.

Electric VTOLs are shaping up as something you'll use as a service, rather than something you'd buy and keep in your garage for personal use. But Next UAS wants to re-open the conversation on personal ownership, with this single-seat iFly concept.

Last month, we reported on astonishing first flight footage from the Copterpack, an Australian electric personal flight device. Now, eagle-eyed pixel peepers have scrutinized the video and presented evidence that a tether wire has been edited out.

Montreal's Alexandru Duru first flew his electric multirotor hoverboard back in 2015, and quickly set a Guinness World Record for distance. Now this levitating madman is working to commercialize it for sale, while performing stunt shows on the side.

A green alternative to the humble kerosene-burning jetpack? Video shows an Australian man rising high off the ground using a two-rotor electric personal flight device he calls the Copterpack. It's bulky, but looks surprisingly stable and controllable.

Flying super-marines may soon be a thing. Gravity Industries has teamed up with the UK Royal Marines to demonstrate its Iron Man-style jet suit in a ship boarding exercise, and has released video of the results.

He flew too close to the sun. French extreme sports athlete Vince Reffet has died after a jet suit training incident in the desert near Dubai. The 36-year-old was the second person on the planet to fly Yves Rossi’s Jetman flight suit.

Ever since wingsuit flying took off as an extreme sport around the year 2000, people have been wondering if it'd be possible to stick a motor on one, and give it the ability to accelerate and climb. The answer is yes, as you'll see in this video.

Richard Browning's Jet Suit may have a lock on cool, but now it's looking for practical applications. GNAAS has collaborated with Gravity Industries on a test flight in the Lake District to see if the flight system could be used by paramedics.

Another stunning milestone for the Jetman team, as pilot Vince Reffet demonstrates the new ability to take off from the ground, then hit the gas on the carbon jet wing's four turbine engines and soar away into the sky.