A video released earlier this month shows former watercross racer Fanky Zapata soar over water in a jet-powered – not water-propelled– hovercraft.
In 2011, Zapata created the Flyboard, a water-propelled hovercraft. Its popularity took off and became a hoverboard racing sport with an annual world cup held in Dubai.
The Flyboard Air is their latest product and it can sustain flight without the help of a jet stream of water.
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Their website boasts that it can achieve autonomous flight of up to 3,000 metres in distance and reach speeds of up 150 km/h.
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The viral video demonstrating the hoverboard, which garnered over 2.8 million views in two weeks, shows Zapata zipping around on the machine at 55 km/h.
Many claimed the video was fake but Zapata told The Verge otherwise.
“Our goal was to make something so small that people would believe it’s a fake, or it’s just an animation. And so when people said that, honestly, we are happy about that,” he said. “We achieved our goal.”
The machine uses four engines totalling 1,000 horsepower and the pilot wears a backpack full of kerosene.
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Even though Zapata says he hopes to one day change the way we travel, he admits it takes many hours of training to properly use the Flyboard Air.
“At the moment the Flyboard Air is something like, if you want to ride it, you have to spend 100 hours on a water Flyboard, plus you have to learn how to use it for another 20 hours, and you can still make a mistake and fall,” he said.
Zapata said it took over four years to develop the prototype and they will continue to develop it until they can “ride the clouds.”
“That’s my dream and I will do my best to realize that.”