Flying car tested in Eastern Washington could be in production next year

MOSES LAKE — Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a… car? 

Well, pretty soon it could be. The Switchblade, which was tested in Moses Lake, has the potential to be the flying car science fiction has promised us for decades. 

“The future is all in the air right now and we're mostly on the ground,” said Sam Bousfield, CEO and founder of Samson Sky, which is developing the Switchblade. “So what's going to happen to get us from where we are to where we're going? And to me, it was something that would do a little of both and be able to swim in both oceans.” 

The Switchblade is a three-wheel, two-seater sports car with expandable wings and tail tucked away in compartments on the sides and rear. The idea is that the owner can drive from home to an airport, expand the flying gear, fly to the airport of their choice, then fold up the wings and drive to their destination. The plane made a successful test flight at Grant County International Airport in November 2023, Bousfield said. 

“(The pilot) flew off and he was gone for six minutes or something like that,” Bousfield said. “He was supposed to stay close to the airport where we could video him. And he said ‘Yeah, sorry about that. I got up there and I was having so much fun I just kept going.” 

Much of the Switchblade’s testing was done at the University of Washington in a wind tunnel, but that wasn’t feasible for testing the plane’s top speed, Bousfield said. 

“One thing that's really nice about (GCIA), it’s so long that you can get up off the runway, do a test and then land on the runway again,” he said. “That really worked for us, because we could get in a lot of small testing ahead of time, and then when we're ready, go up to altitude and then level off and see how fast it goes.” 

The Switchblade isn’t in production yet, but Bousfield said he anticipates turning out the first ones about a year from now at Samson Sky’s Redmond, Oregon headquarters. Still, just from word of mouth and a little bit of online advertising, Samson Sky has logged about 2,600 reservations from 50 countries, Bousfield said. 

Even when the Switchblade hits the market, it will have a fairly specific target market, Bousfield said. It’s still an airplane, which means a pilot’s license is required to fly it. And because it’s classed as an experimental aircraft, it has to be sold with at least 51% of the assembly to be done by the purchaser. However, there’s a possibility the Switchblade could be classed as a light sport aircraft, which would make the licensing requirements less stringent, Bousfield said. 

The Switchblade isn’t quite the first flying car to be produced, and not even the first in the Northwest. In the late 1940s, a Washingtonian named Molt Taylor created the Aerocar, a prototype vehicle with removable wings and tail that took about 15 minutes to change over. The concept never went very far, according to the Museum of Flight; only six units were built. Part of the reason for the failure, Bousfield said, was that a flying car has to satisfy regulations from two separate bureaucratic agencies. 

“They were trying to serve two masters, one of which was the (Federal Aviation Administration), with all the rules on certified aircraft. The (Department of Transportation) for the ground also had their own rules, and they're getting more and more complex over the years on how you build a car, and those two sets of rules do not talk to one another.” 

On the ground the Switchblade can be registered as either a custom motorcycle or a kit car depending on the state, according to Samson Sky’s website. 

So how does a flying car handle on the ground? 

“Oh my gosh, it’s a banshee,” Bousfield said. “You step on the accelerator, you’d better be holding on because it moves. It handles really well. We beat everything in Road and Track (Magazine)’s historical database for cars that were of our wheelbase or longer.”

Ultimately, Bousfield expects the Switchblade to be popular with professionals and sales reps who travel a lot from city to city. It can take off and land at anything from a major metro airport to a rural crop duster airstrip. 

“It's (for) people with seven different businesses in three different states,” he said. “They are spending their time flying or driving and it takes up their life … With this, you can go to the first one, finish your get there, go to the second one and then fly home for dinner, and then go out the next day, hit the third one and the fourth one, and then home for dinner. So you can run through the week and still be home and sleep in your own bed.” 

    The Samson Sky Switchblade comes in for a landing at Grant County International Airport in 2023.
  

    The Switchblade soars over Moses Lake in its test flight. Test pilot Robert Moehle took the flying car to an altitude of 500 feet and flew for six minutes before returning to Grant County International Airport.