Count me among the skeptics when the first teaser for the Flyboard Air came out last month. Turns out, it’s more real than any hoverboard we’ve seen before, as the darn thing just set the Guinness World Record for the furthest distance traveled on a hovering transporter.
According to Guinness, inventor Franky Zapata, who also made the original Flyboard, rode the device a total of 7,388 feet – over 6,300 feet further than the previous record holder. And he did that while performing a clean landing, too, making things look really, really good for what appears to be humanity’s greatest hope for a functional commercial hoverboard.
The aircraft can reach a claimed maximum height of 10,000 feet, with a maximum speed of 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour)
In the run up to the attempt, a short video of a test flight of the Flyboard® Air went viral, amassing over 3 million view on YouTube, with many viewers leaving comments doubting if the hoverboard was actually real.