If you're interested in the concept of personal airplanes replacing commercial flight, I highly recommend "Free Flight" by James Fallows.<p>There's a lot of things working against the concept. Weather constraints and sport pilot restrictions are logistical issues, but by far the #1 issue is cost. The Transition, Terrefugia, and A5 aren't doing much to solve this by selling for $190-300k, so they definitely won't be changing how the general public travels.<p>Regardless, I couldn't be happier with my Sport License. For now I can only afford to rent, and not much at that. Were it not for the LSA category though, flying would still just be a wish.
2 deaths per hundred thousand hours is really a lot.<p>So if you're a hobbyist, and you fly a light sport aircraft six hours a week for thirty years, you've got a 20% chance of it killing you. (Right? I haven't had coffee yet.)
What I want is an Airfish ekranoplan [1]. It's got to be much cheaper to run, and the risk of dying is far, far lower. You could probably use if for distance travel if you followed rivers or coasts.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAfm0YtETSE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAfm0YtETSE</a>