March 2001
Flying Made Easy
New digital technologies designed to ensure safer and more user-friendly flying could turn us into a nation of pilots. It's not the Jetsons, but you'll be able to fly yourself to a community "smartport" in an idiotproof miniplane.
By David H. Freedman
I recently traveled from outside Boston to Groton, CT-a popular trip in these parts, thanks to a nearby casino-and then on to Cape Cod, before returning home. It's about a five-hour drive, if the traffic isn't too bad. I did it in a little over two hours, by flying. Not a commercial flight: just driving to Boston's Logan Airport, checking in and boarding takes two hours. I flew myself in a rented Cessna, for a total cost of $160-a cost I could have split up to four ways if I had gone with friends. Besides being quick and relatively cheap, the trip afforded stunning panoramas of explosively colored fall foliage and ragged shoreline inaccessible from the earthbound perspective of a car or through the plastic peephole of a 747.
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