I come from a big, loving family.  When we all get together you’d think we were Italian – we are certainly loud and have a lot of fun!  I was very close with my brother and sister growing up and we’re still close – good friends, in fact.  It’s great seeing our kids growing up to be friends with their cousins – the next generation.  Soon we’ll have grandkids running around too.

My family and I live in Northern California.  My sister and her family live in Southern California.  (My brother and his family are really far away in Illinois, unfortunately.)

We all lead very busy lives and over the last 20 years, even though we live in the same state, my sister and I have seldom made the 8 hour drive to visit each other.  Flying commercially is fine, but I can’t fly whenever it works best for me, it’s costly, I live an hour from our international airport, I have to put up with long security lines (don’t get me started on that), and I have to rent a car on the other end.  This all adds up to about 5 hours of travel time (door to door) and costs many hundreds of dollars. At today’s prices, Southwest could fly two of us to Burbank, roundtrip for $565 (with more than 7 days advance booking) or $955 (less than 7 days advance).

With my Switchblade flying car, I will drive 15 minutes to my local airport, fly at about 160 mph, land at a regional airport near my sister’s house, and drive right on over with no delays. It will turn that day long drive or 5 hour commercial flight trip into a 3 hour trip – door to door. With 10 hours of travel round trip (via commercial flight and rental car), there is no way to make a day trip down there for a special family event.  But with only 6 hours (via flying car), a day trip becomes workable.

I did the math, and in my Switchblade, this round trip would cost $105 for gas. Did I mention it uses automobile gas, not aviation fuel?  How does that compare with driving the whole way? It costs me $70 in gas to make the 16 hour round trip drive in our Honda Accord. Another benefit of using my flying car is that I would only have to drive in the LA area for about 40 minutes each way – and 15 of that is on local roads, driving on a twisty, scenic road to my sister’s beautiful mountain top home.

Now I’ll be able to catch my oldest nephew’s band’s gig at a Los Angeles club, my sister’s special birthday party, the premier of my brother-in-law’s new film, my middle nephew’s high school graduation, or my youngest nephew’s championship soccer game.  Sadly, I have missed many special events over the years, simply because it was so time-consuming and costly to get there.  That’s soon to be a problem of the past.  My Switchblade is going to make it so much easier for me to spend time with my family.  And I can’t put a price tag on that.

–  Martha Bousfield