"Eastward Bound" wrote in message
om...
| I remember watching on Discovery channel the possibilities of giving
| the common people minature aircraft that are extreamly simple to fly.
|

The problem is that aircraft require much more energy and resources than do
automobiles, which is another way of saying that they are expensive both to
own and to operate. No one is going to 'give' airplanes to the common people
or anyone else. It takes a lot of fuel to fly, so the small personal
aircraft is going to have either very limited range or it is going to be
bigger than most people realize.

Most cities would prefer to concentrate on mass transportation, which moves
the parking and pollution problems of individual transportation to outlying
areas. Individual aircraft are not mass transit.

NASA and others have been working on aircraft that are more simple to fly,
but so far the technology has not been up to the task. Most pilots think
that there will have to be considerable advances in avionics and other areas
before such an aircraft as you describe will be practical.

One advocate of a system such as you describe has been attempting to build a
"Skycar" for more than forty years. He has spent millions of dollars of
taxpayers' and other peoples' money and has little to show for his efforts.
He is good at media promotion but that is about it. He has never built an
aircraft capable of carrying an actual passenger. He has also been wildly
optimistic on how much his Skycar will cost and has ignored the incredible
fuel cost of operating such a vehicle.