As Thanksgiving approches, and we brace for the imminent drop kick to the chest travelling by any means at any point in the next 24-36 hours will deliver, one Brooklyn man’s fight to make floating along the city’s skyways more accessible is giving us hope it won’t always be like this.
On November 4th, Jonathan Warren, a recreational aviator aptly and elegantly dubbed the “Fan Man” by those who’ve seen him and his homemade personal aircraft in action, was grounded and arrested in South Brooklyn by NYPD. Warren’s fan-powered paraglider was seized, ending a two-year streak of candidly, harmlessly hovering along the waterways between the boroughs and New Jersey in a fan-powered paraglider.
Warren was accused of parachuting off the Verrazzano Bridge during the New York City marathon at the time, according to Gothamist, but he claims to have only ever launched and landed in Calvert Vaux Park in Gravesend Bay for all of his flights and that he strictly follows Federal Aviation Administration guidelines when in the air. And it doesn’t appear there’s anything to suggest otherwise. His felony reckless endangerment charge was downgraded to disorderly conduct, for flying over a city park (which prosecutors deemed illegal), to which he pleaded guilty and took four days of community service as penance.
Fan Man’s wings have yet to be returned, and he’s pledged to remain on the tarmac until city and federal officials determine the legality of his flights, but he’s committed to this whole “right to flight” thing. So much so that he’s currently working to form a non-profit called the “Paramotor Flight Standards Association” to work with regulators to designate spaces on city property for hobbyists like Warren to take off and return safely.
“It is my belief that local laws that make it difficult to legally operate ultralight aircraft [frustrate] the intent of the FAA and make the national airspace system less safe,” Warren told Gothamist. “I’m looking forward to setting up meetings over the winter and spring with various city entities to hopefully get an explicit landing site or two set up next year under a not-for-profit community organisation,” he added, eyes on the prize of getting back up there.
And who knows if he’ll actually pull it off, but if there were ever a point in the city’s history that felt more capable of producing this type of consideration for personal lightweight hovercrafts, I certainly have not lived through it.
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