Libertarians Want to Make New Hampshire a Flying Car Mecca
Can the “live free or die” state help the dream of roadable aircraft take flight?
Phil Meteer, Terrafugia’s chief pilot, adjusts his helmet before test flying Transition, the company's flying car or “roadable aircraft,” at New Hampshire’s Nashua Airport.
Photographer: M. Scott Brauer for Bloomberg
Talk about nosedives.
Hopes for the flying car soared in January, when one manufacturer, Woburn, Massachusetts-based Terrafugia, attained a long-awaited industry first: a Federal Aviation Authority airworthiness certificate for its Transition, a “roadable aircraft” — a winged, gas-powered, wheeled vehicle that can be both driven and flown. Suddenly the aerial sedan, first popularized in the 1960s cartoon The Jetsons, needed only U.S. Department of Transportation approval before it could be let loose on America’s highways and flyways. Terrafugia hailed a “major accomplishment.” Champagne corks flew.