Boeing 'Flying Car' makes its first flight

US aerospace group Boeing announced late on Wednesday (South African time) that its prototype autonomous urban air mobility vehicle had successfully made its maiden flight at Manassas, in the US State of Virginia, on Tuesday. Boeing calls the aircraft a passenger air vehicle (PAV). The maiden flight involved a controlled take-off, hover and landing. It tested the PAV’s ground control systems and autonomous functions. Subsequent flight tests will see the aircraft carry out wing-borne forward flights and test the transition between vertical flight and forward flight. Transition is usually the major engineering concern for high-speed vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) aircraft.