Will Funding, Politics, and Infrastructure Issues Unplug Electric Aviation?
As start-up companies push forward with ambitious plans for futuristic aircraft, we take a down-to-earth look at the obstacles they may face.
March 2021
Aviation’s electric propulsion revolution is well underway, but when will it be coming to an airport or community near you as part of an advanced air mobility (AAM) system?
While there are predictions aplenty, no one knows for sure, due to the daunting technical and political challenges that remain. However, the consensus is that you’ll see smaller electric fixed-wing and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft service using existing helicopter routes, heliports, vertiports, and airports long before you experience anything resembling an airborne Uber, with ubiquitous rooftop landing pads. The promise of overflying congested ground traffic within, or between, cities with all-electric aircraft still faces major hurdles.
Building Your Own Field of Dreams
A runway in your backyard offers perhaps the ultimate in privacy and convenience. Here’s what you have to consider, do, and spend to make it a reality.
February 2021
Arthur Jones, the founder of fitness companies Nautilus and MedX, was an animal lover who kept elephants, rhinos, and a gorilla on his estate, Jumbolair, near Ocala, Florida. An accomplished pilot, he’d fly the animals in on a Boeing 707 and later on his 747 jumbo jet because the 707 “wasn’t big enough for the elephants.”
Jones bought the original 80-acre estate in 1980, added hundreds of surrounding acres, and built its centerpiece: a 7,550-foot-long runway large enough for the 747 and its pachyderm passengers. Before he died in 2007, he lost control of a large part of the estate to an ex-wife who had begun to develop it into an uber-affluent fly-in community with residents including the actor-pilot John Travolta.