Meet George Jetson

As Richard Gersh loves to say, "we build flying cars."

Yep.  Gersh is Vice President of Terrafugia and his company's Transition is a legitimate light sport airplane you can literally drive down Main Street and park in your garage.  The future is now.  Call them roadable aircraft, flying cars, carplanes, or just damned cool - they're coming, and soon.

Fulton Airphibian, 1946

Actually, flying cars have been around since at least 1917 - just fifteen years after the famous flight at Kitty Hawk.  They have been the stuff of science fiction since the inception of that genre, but Dr. Paul Moller has been trying to get one of his VTOL prototypes to market since before the Jetsons aired its first episode.  They have ranged from modified four-wheeled airplanes to detachable four-wheeled cockpits, but recently some innovative ideas found enough financial backing to push working models into production that might actually have a shot.

To get the scoop on where this industry is and where it might be heading, I called up Jeff Buckholz of Buckholz Traffic, a traffic engineering firm based in Jacksonville, Florida.  Jeff is a PhD civil engineer, an avid multi-rating VFR pilot, and the editor of Carplane News.  He started that site to provide an objective source of information among the many manufacturer pages advertising and soliciting funding for their upcoming projects.

Jeff provided me with two major insights as to why this industry has been waiting to take off for so long.  First, the carplane industry has been lacking a major financial player (think Toyota, Ford, that kind of thing) to launch a major project.  Terrafugia was started with MIT seed fund money and is nearing commercial production, but many other players are stuck waiting on the sidelines for investors to come in and help them surpass the massive design and regulatory challenges faced by these vehicles.

Samson Motorworks "Switchblade"

Second, "the FAA is totally unprepared for this...they don't see carplanes as an issue.  I think right now, they're right, but I think in a few years they're going to become what the UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] are now."  Jeff actually does have some firsthand experience on this, having written several letters to the FAA regarding these issues and received vague or silent responses on each.

Despite these issues, Jeff and I agree on one reason the carplane movement will eventually succeed among pilots: weather.  It's no secret that a quarter of all general aviation accidents are attributable to inclement weather, and some of these vehicles have already proven their ability to put down at an airport, drive clear of a storm, and fly through the other side.

Luckily for me, the legal issues aren't going away anytime soon.  These vehicles will definitely be regulated - it's a matter of how and when the FAA decides they're serious enough to deal with.  I'll be looking at a few specific issues over the next few months, like how these vehicles will be insured or where they will (and won't) be allowed to take flight.  It ought to be a fun little ride.

Thanks to Jeff for the interview and insight.