Personal Flight

After ending up in the water on his first attempt, flying Frenchman Franky Zapata has now successfully crossed the English Channel on his jet-powered Flyboard Air. The 22-mile (35.4-km) crossing took Zapata some 22 minutes, holding speeds over 100 mph (160 km/h).

Seeing David Mayman flying his thunderous JB-10 jetpack in person is an absolutely astonishing experience. We were there to watch his "redemption flight" in Sydney Harbour and attend the premiere of Own the Sky, a stunning documentary made about Mayman's life by a boyhood friend.

​Boeing's race to achieve safe, quiet, compact VTOL personal flight devices has narrowed its list down to five competitors, each of which get US$50,000 to help develop their prototypes. Meet the Phase II GoFly winners going on to compete for a US$1.6 million final round prize pool.

Jetpack Aviation has leap-frogged its own flying car project with the announcement that it's taking pre-orders now on a self-stabilizing, jet turbine-powered flying motorcycle capable of 150 mph speeds, 20 minute endurance and 15,000 ft altitudes.

​Flying taxi services may take some time to arrive, but if you want to be among the first to pilot a manned multicopter, you'll have the chance in 2019. Lift Aircraft is preparing to debut a personal flight experience in an 18-prop electric VTOL aircraft for about the price of a skydive.

Yes, that's a head poking out the end of this terrifying personal flight concept. Called the Dart Flyer, it's essentially a quadcopter with a winged pilot cocoon on top of it. Definitely not one for nervous flyers, it's been submitted as a contender in the GoFly challenge, sponsored by Boeing.

Personal Flight pioneer and real-life Iron Man Richard Browning has found an innovative way to speed-test the aerodynamics of his Gravity jet suit. He's been flying up and down Europe's longest and fastest zip line in Wales. Check out the video!

The Zapata Ezfly​ looks for all intents and purposes like a Segway of the sky. You stand on a small platform equipped with a series of jet thrusters, holding two handgrips that come up from the base, then rise up into the air and zoom around, steering with your bodyweight.

Real life Iron Man Richard Browning has put his jet-powered flight suit to the test, setting a new Guinness world speed record. Watch him skim the surface of a lake at top speed before tumbling into the water.

The field of flying taxis is one that is starting to fill up. Joining the likes of the Ehang 184 and Volocopter is the newly announced Passenger Drone, which is built to help usher in an era of personal aerial transportation by autonomously carrying people from point A to point B.

​While a number of inventors have brought the idea of a jetpack closer to reality, personal flight remains a dream for most of us. Boeing has had enough of the dreaming, and is putting up US$2 million in prize money to encourage bright ideas around building an easy-to-use personal flying device.

​Around this time last year, we featured a crazy Swedish multirotor flying machine invented and flown by engineer Alex Borg. At that time, it featured eight petrol-powered rotors, but earlier this year he opted for lots of electric motors. And now the chAIR manned VTOL has taken off.​