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French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard

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Tuesday, August 6, 2019

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Franky Zapata demonstrating the Flyboard Air in June at Le Temps des Hélices in La Ferté-Alais, France.
Image: Franky Zapata via Facebook.

This Sunday, French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crossed the English Channel on a jet-powered freeflight flying device propelled by turbines and attached to his feet, called Flyboard Air. The 22-mile (35-km) journey took 22 minutes with one refueling about halfway to Dover, England. This success came on the second attempt by the inventor to cross the Channel. This device was invented three years ago and could reportedly serve military assault or logistics purposes.

The flight started at 8:17 a.m. local time (0617 UTC) in Sangatte and finished in St Margaret's at Cliffe near Dover. Zapata flew across the water at over 100 mph (161 km/h). The inventor carried a backpack with kerosene (paraffin) and was escorted by three helicopters. Zapata also made one landing on a boat mid-channel to refill the kerosene fuel in his backpack, a process Zapata described as being tricky because the boat could not be kept still in the moving waters of the Channel.

"Once I managed to stick my heels into the boat, I knew I had done 90% of the work," Zapata told French news channel BFM TV.

Strong winds over the Channel presented difficulty during the crossing, Zapata said, adding it required much endurance to manage to stay airborne. "It's an isometric exercise for the thighs, so it burns — it's quite hard."

Upon arrival, Zapata told reporters, "We made a machine three years ago... and now we've crossed the Channel, it's crazy."

This was Zapata's second attempt to cross the Channel on the Flyboard Air. On July 25, which was the 110th anniversary of the first plane flight across the Channel by pilot Louis Blériot, Zapata fell into the water after a low-speed collision with the resupply boat.

The inventor previously presented the device at the Bastille Day military parade earlier this year. In that instance, he had been holding a rifle in his hands to show the invention could be utilized for military purposes.

Franky Zapata also invented the original Flyboard, which is propelled by jets of water drawn up by a hose, unlike the Flyboard Air, which uses jets of air.


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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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