My old logbook isn’t handy, but I can safely say I totaled well over 500 flying hours, and retired with an FAA commercial certificate
and an instrument rating. The FAA required (A) passing a written exam for
each of the above, (B) an endorsement by my
licensed instructor, and (C) a test flight under an wxacting FAA examiner.

Those qualifications were earned after well over 50 hours of some ground and flight training, with nearly as much book and regulations study. The instrument exam required donning a hood during the entire flight after takeoff. Under it, you could see nothing outside the cockpit; you flew, using only the information you derived from those instruments.

Every other pilot so rated had passed these tests. And every pilot flying in weather below specified minimums had to have filed an instrument flight plan; and to be in
contact with Air Traffic Control at all times.

Now consider millions of cars–not to mention trucks(!)–tooling through the air. Driven by those same swell drivers who swerve in front of you with no signal, or jump out from a side road, unfettered by any rules.
And certainly not trained to the degree of licensed pilots. Would you honestly like to be up there among them?

what? Cars ram into buildings full of people too, especially in cities. They don’t only die out when no one is around.

Secondly you are wrong, engines dying don’t mean planes plummet to the ground. Most planes can glide to a landing. Even helicopters are capable of gliding, more properly known as “auto rotation”, and can safely land after their engine dies. All we’d have to do is our flying cars would have to have aerofoils large enough.

What *is* required is a massive ramp up in general aviation traffic that will push for genuinely modern navigation, and dramatically lower the costs of hardware at the same time. If they built 50,000 airplanes a year, a high performance job would cost less than an SUV. Believe it or not, they’re not nearly as complicated, and if the engine quits, there are parachutes available for the whole airplane.

Google the NASA project “AGATE” (Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments). They had it figured out how to use on-board computers for ATC and navigation that a low-time pilot could use in all weather situations, in high traffic environments required to lower the cost.

I’m flying from AZ to NE Colorado in the morning. It would be an 18 hour drive, but I should be there before noon. No anal exam at the airport, and I leave direct from my hangar-house at a private airport. If more people did this, it would be cheaper for all of us.

Just Do It.

Semi-autonomous flying cars who report in an electronic flight plan moments before takeoff to a computer that clears them an appropriate corridor in seconds are what the doctor ordered. The benefits are improved economic connectivity, lower systemic costs (lost time in traffic, lower infrastructure costs), less infringement on personal liberties with security searches and lower carnage when things go wrong.

Many of the objections here and on the subsequent contra column are behind the times. Planes small enough to be labeled flying cars can be equipped with whole plane parachutes. Crashes would be much more survivable and a directional siren and bright flashing light would let everybody know to get out of the way and not let one land on you. This is proven technology available today.

The FAA has committed to creating a flight control system which would support semi-autonomous flight and sufficient to support those millions of flying cars over New York City. That they are abysmally late and over budget is something separate. It is considered a hard, but solvable, engineering problem. Eventually it will be solved, either by the current government system or by the government setting reasonable standards and privatizing control (as private ATC happens in much of the Pacific).

A system that can automate the filing of a flight plan and clearing out a corridor can certainly do fuel calculations based on reported fuel levels and simply refuse the flight plan without a stop at a refueling station at a safe intermediate distance. Talk about running out of fuel in mid-air is not realistic as the computer is going to be able to calculate distance flown from last fueling as well as getting an instrument read of how much fuel is in the tank. Divergence leads to a mandatory repair stop.

I have to say that the biggest problem is the failure of imagination of our government to set the rules necessary for the development of this technology. Instead they stand in the way both with legal liability rules as well with ATC rules. The government has a role and it is not doing its job very well.

why do you even need this absurd car/plane idea?

-jcr