I'm loving this race down the Californian coast between the home of Mr. Beast and an unnamed restaurant, and while I don't have a reservation I do have some that relate to taking a Jetson instead of the car?
Firstly, as is apparent from the arrival there are few restaurants I know in the UK willing to clear the car-park of revenue-paying customers and barricade the public (beside upgrading the home insurance) in order to facilitate one of them landing.
What happens subsequent (at least where I live) is the diner would spend less time worrying about Mr. Beast, and more about whether his ride has been stolen or vandalised ~ intentionally or unintentionally by all those selfies. The restaurant will though have someone keep an eye on it, likely soon a robot, as happens already at those restaurants that charge sufficient to attract only the wealthy?
The sad fact is, most of the Michelin-starred restaurants that people who can afford a Jetson are likely to visit are in places like London, which were designed for Roman carriages. You do get the odd one in the nearby countryside where the people who complain about helicopters live: the reason the one between Heathrow and Gatwick was shut down.
Furthermore, the people travelling to them ~ as I did once ~ will be doing so from Wimbledon, where they've room for tennis courts but neither room for helipads nor the council's permission to use them ~ and that's dead in the water, even if you are not after flying the cliff-line.
For the problem plaguing every form of personal aerial transport has been just this ~ the last mile ~ and only recently the VFS forum has been alive to the fact that the longer it takes to travel to a 'vertiport' to take a flying taxi, the less people will be inclined to use one at any cost.
And then as we pursue actions that ensure we'll be loathed by adherents of one sort of religious or national affiliation or another, there is the question of security.
Few of us need stand in line to get frisked prior driving to the restaurant, but the attraction of bringing down high-value targets like flying taxis (Concorde withdrawn this way, no matter the excuse) might spoil the evening if the handbags' contents have to be decanted from the get-go.
Which brings us to the Jetson, which is a DIY kamikaze pilot's dream and able to be steered at whichever high-class target with high explosive aboard and few fears of interception. And as often as not, the people inclined to do that will be the ones with petrodollars to pay for it... as they generally are at the best London restaurants.
And so we love the dream, we really do, and I'd rather be in a Jetson flying down the coast to meet Mr. Beast for eggs Benedict instead of sitting here in bed eating toast and marmalade with my stuffed Paddington bear.
But you and I know that ~ like fucking Sabrina Carpenter ~ it ain't going to happen.
Ed. note to lawyers, that's 'fucking Sabrina' active and not descriptive... and if Sabrina's reading, the author says he's willing to travel.
