Small Personal Plane

With self-propelled automobiles already on the road, the next natural move to keep up with the Jetsons is - of course - personal aircraft. Lilium Aviation is working on an electrical aircraft with two passengers that can take off and landing upright. According to the airline, it is planning to introduce the aircraft by January 2018.

"It is our aim to design an airplane for daily use," said Daniel Wiegand, CEO of Lilium, and added that his business is planning to make the aircraft's engine significantly lower so that these cars can take off from the neighbourhood without difficulty. Capable of cruising at 180 mph, the plane can cover a max. of 300 mile.

It fits into a room of about 50 feet by 50 feet, which is slightly the scale of a small backyard. Fuelling the aircraft is as easy as inserting a cable into a sockets. Naturally, this aircraft is not suitable for urban dwellers or weather-prone areas. However, the airline suggests a clear sky and minimum aviation for the flights.

Good tidings are to pilot this aircraft, for which you only need 20 hour practice to obtain a light aircraft licence.

Those flyers who are risking their life to fly minute airplanes across the Atlantic.

Fährschifffahrt is a profitable but risky sector. Ultra-small aircrafts provide small aeroplanes over ocean and continent - ranges for which these aeroplanes are not made. Just being able to cross the Atlantic with a small single-engine plane at low altitude, sometimes under extremely adverse meteorological circumstances, is not for the weak of nerves.

Shipping by boat is a dense network of airplanes, some of which have performed hundred or even thousand of missions to deliver small aircraft to distant targets. Dad was a boatman. When I was a kid my whole childhood was marked by aeronautics - my vacations were for airplanes and flies.

I first remember setting up my soft toy animals and puppets in the dashboard of a small Cessna plane. When my dad was building up his flight lessons, there were afternoons in France - my little bike was tucked in the back. When I was a kid, I liked to hear tales of his flight adventure.

But I was conscious that these enthralling stories of flying over war-torn lands or across the Atlantic in freezing temperatures were under censorship to keep me from caring about its security. My dad was murdered in 1999 when the plane he delivered fell over the Canadian mountain range. I had little to do with airplanes or air travel after his death.

Over the years, however, I began to wonder what his career as a boat driver and his enthusiasm for it were. Aircraft are maintained and resold throughout the UK. The fixation and restoration of an aircraft can take weeks, even years. "No matter what plane you're in, you have to find a way to make it go as far as many small airplanes wouldn't normally," says Julian Storey, 43.

They are airplanes that can usually travel 200-400 mile at a single flight (320-645km). However, the quickest waterway you can take on an Atlantic cruise is 700 mile. Since most small airplanes are pressureless, it is not recommended to climb over 10,000 feet. Storey shows me a Britten-Norman Islander lightweight that is currently being refurbished in a huge hanger full of airplanes and choppers at Biggin Hill International in Kent.

Hopefully he will hand it over to its new owner as soon as the renovation is completed and the plane is for sale. "He says this is true flying." "Before take-off, the islanders must be fitted with vehicle tankers containing the drums of petrol required for the voyage. It is a slower plane that does not have the kind of high-tech gear to cope with the ice and wheather you can anticipate from bigger or more modern planes.

That' s what I always cared about, especially when my dad flew over the water. He had special survivor gear with him - a safety measure that all Ferrymen take to get ready for the chance to disappear into the water. "Most important thing that will slay you in the oceans is hypothermia," says Dave Henderson, 60, a flight attendant who has made almost 100 transatlantic overflights with lights.

"When you land in the ocean, it's important to get into your liferaft, but I also have a thick wetsuit that surrounds the entire torso and you probably have a few extra healing hours in it. "He knows other boat drivers who have ended up in the ocean and have lived, but he acknowledges that he doesn't care where he lives.

So Henderson has put the survivors equipment into the Piper Aerostar, all security check are completed and the plane is prepared for Joe Drury to take it to Florida, a voyage that will probably take about four day. Overnight in Iceland and then on to Greenland - either to Narsarsuaq in the southern part or further to Kulusuk in the northern part according to local conditions - then to Bangor, Maine and along the US eastern coastline.

Narsarsuaq and Reykjavik are places I recall listening to my dad as he was preparing for his travels. This is the North Atlantic Sky Freight Trail. Founded by aviators during the Second World War to carry planes from North America to Europe to assist battle. Transferring an airplane across the Atlantic is the ultimative test for plane and driver.

Not only transatlantic routes are a challenge. The former military commander, who became a fighter driver, suffered a temporary motor breakdown during a trip over the Sahara, was implicated in two different events in which his co-pilots became insensitive at high altitudes, and on another opportunity was compelled to avoid the fire of small weapons during take-off in the Middle East.

"who can take over all facets of the mission. "Personally, I enjoy air travel and I think the distinction between air travel on a boat and a regular business aviation career is that you actually do the physical air travel, it's a true stock and gun gun, and it's very appealing.

Every one of the boat drivers I have spoken to knows my friend and colleague who passed away at work. Everybody agrees that travelling by boat is not a carreer for lateral thinkers or bravura. Having met these flyers, I am remembered how my own lives were enhanced by aeronautics and my father's love of flight.

I' m happy that he had the chance to do what he liked - to be a boatman. During 2013, a traveller was able to landing a plane at Humberside Airport after his flight attendant became ill. Without practice, how hard is it to get a plane down safe?