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Watch Video: Zapata Personal Airscooter VTOL Aircraft “to launch in 2024”

Imag­ine a scoot­er, now see it fly­ing in the sky. That is the vision of inven­tor, Franky Zap­a­ta, who has cre­at­ed a per­son­al Airscoot­er VTOL one-seater air­craft. First shown at the Paris Viva Tech­nol­o­gy event in June, the craft wowed the crowds and Zap­a­ta now says, “It will be com­mer­cial­ly launched next year.”

The craft with its patent­ed hybrid-elec­tric propul­sion sys­tem is com­pli­ant with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) PART 103 Reg­u­la­tions, and there­fore does not require a flight cer­tifi­cate and so can be flown with­out a pilot’s license in the USA and Chi­na as an “ultra­light air­craft”. 

The com­pa­ny explains on its web­site, “Airscoot­er offers a longer flight time than any oth­er VTOL in the mar­ket; patent­ed com­put­er assist­ed fly by wire con­trols ensure the high­est degree of safe­ty while requir­ing min­i­mal train­ing; and thanks to its hybrid pow­er­train and sus­tain­able fuel, the Airscoot­er car­bon foot­print is com­pa­ra­ble to a pas­sen­ger car.”

The Airscoot­er comes in the form of a ful­ly glazed cock­pit resem­bling an egg and is pilot­ed using two joy­sticks. It has a top speed of 100 km/h, a cruise speed of 80 km/h and a flight time of more than 2 hours. The max­i­mum pay­load is 120 kg.

Described by the com­pa­ny as “the world’s most advanced per­son­al fly­ing machine”, it will com­pete with the grow­ing num­ber of one-seater per­son­al air­craft now being devel­oped includ­ing Lift’s HEXA, the Jet­son One and RYSE Aero. 

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Zapata’s Com­mu­ni­ty Man­ag­er, Beat­riz Este­ban Cara, talk­ing to Euronews Next at the VivaT­e­ch event, said that the pub­lic will be able to have a go at fly­ing the scoot­ers in flight cen­tres locat­ed around the US from next year. The first to open will be in Lake Hava­su City, close to Phoenix, Ari­zona. She empha­sised that the Airscoot­er is safe, for if any­thing does go wrong, onboard com­put­ers can auto­mat­i­cal­ly guide the scoot­er safe­ly back to earth.

Zapata’s ini­tial aim is to sell the air­craft to com­pa­nies that want to open their own flight cen­tres to offer cus­tomers recre­ation­al flight expe­ri­ences. There­fore, it is unlike­ly you’ll be see­ing these scoot­ers fly­ing over­head in Euro­pean cities any time soon. The cost to buy such an air­craft is unclear.

44 year-old Zap­a­ta is an intrigu­ing man. He is the inven­tor of the Fly­board and Fly­board Air and founder of Zap­a­ta Rac­ing in 1998 which he lat­er sold to a U.S defence con­trac­tor. Since 2012, his efforts have been focused on the devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of per­son­al fly­ers for land and aquat­ic appli­ca­tions.

Franky Zap­a­ta

In August 2019, Zap­a­ta crossed the Eng­lish Chan­nel in just 20 min­utes using a Fly­board Air, with a refu­elling stop at mid­point. His 22-mile jour­ney was com­plet­ed with an escort from sev­er­al French heli­copters and war­ships.

Films of him on hov­er­boards and fly­ing via a jet­pack have gone viral across social media.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.zapata.com

(Top image — AirScoot­er at Viva Tech, Cred­it:Luke Hurst/Euronews Next)

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