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Reporter Tries Flying Car After Minimal Training, Proves Anyone Could Fly

Flying cars have been a dream of humanity ever since 1934 when the first one was unveiled. The idea is that people would gain a whole new degree of freedom if they could buy a car that could fly. However, that comes with many challenges, including learning how to fly, but a company appears to have solved the issue.
Blackfly Personal Aerial Vehicle in flight with CBS correspondent John Blackstone at the controls 13 photos
Photo: Screenshot from Facebook video by CBS Sunday Morning
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Enter Opener, a Silicon Valley startup that has been working on the Blackfly for over a decade. We are confident that you have read articles about it on autoevolution before, and now it has reached a new milestone: the first media “test drive.”

While it may not be as impressive as you might think at first glance, CBS correspondent John Blackstone proved that someone without flight training could safely take off, fly the vehicle without help, and then safely land.

We should note that the vehicle's inventor has developed a simulator to teach people how to safely fly this creation and that the CBS correspondent received simulator training before attempting to fly the real-life prototype.

The inventor behind this vehicle, which we prefer to refer to as a flying car, despite the fact that it cannot function as a conventional automobile, claims that just minutes of training would be enough for someone to learn how to fly his creation.

Current FAA regulations classify the Opener Blackfly as an "ultralight aircraft," and that means that a pilot's license is not required to fly it. Moreover, the vehicle will get an autonomous flying mode, which should allow it to operate with a human as a passenger, not a pilot. But the latter aspect is still in development.

It is important to point out that current FAA regulations do not allow ultralight aircraft to fly at night or over urban areas, which would make this creation good just for leisure activities until the rules change.

Reading the above paragraph again makes us think that it will be more likely to see autonomous cars fully covered by the law and on the road before people will be allowed to fly these ultralight aircraft without a pilot's license over urban areas and even at night. Who knows, maybe we are wrong here, and it will be the other way around.

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About the author: Sebastian Toma
Sebastian Toma profile photo

Sebastian's love for cars began at a young age. Little did he know that a career would emerge from this passion (and that it would not, sadly, involve being a professional racecar driver). In over fourteen years, he got behind the wheel of several hundred vehicles and in the offices of the most important car publications in his homeland.
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