From the sales pitch: "an executive could conceivably take off from the helipad of a country house outside London, fly in comfort to a meeting in Frankfurt in just 60 minutes, then fly on to Zurich, Milan and back home for early dinner" you can guess that these luxury choppers are going to cost quite the packet. Somewhere between a corporate helicopter (which is simpler in design) and a corporate jet (which is more complex.) So, tens of millions then, but you'll have to wait a bit as the aircraft isn't yet certified.

Plus, with all that rotating-engine tech aboard, they'll cost more to maintain than your average helicopter. And if you're a rich business type thinking of buying one, you'd better get your pilots well trained. Remember how tricky the V22 has been to develop?

[TheRegister via ]

It will apparently weigh in at 770 and 990 pounds for the single- and dual-seat versions, and Falx sees it having many applications, including as a police vehicle (visions of the hover cars from Bladerunner zipped through your head then didn't they?)

So why are we skeptical? Well, sure, the V-22 is a military vehicle and it's highly sophisticated—but it's been under development for over 20 years. Longer, if you include all the X-aircraft that preceded it. Two of the prototypes crashed, and two early production models crashed too. So can this small UK company really overcome the same tricky engineering obstacles faced by the V22, including that difficult transition between the hover and forward flight? We're not sure—it seems rather a lot of advanced engineering and control design. We'd love for it to be real, though. [Falx via Gizmag via Uberreview]