French inventor Franky Zapata was forced to abandon his latest attempt to cross the English Channel on Friday after a technical fault halted his flight on the AirScooter, the single-seat hybrid eVTOL he unveiled last year. Minutes after taking off from Sangatte, Pas-de-Calais, Zapata turned back and ditched into the water when one of the machine’s thermal engines malfunctioned. A safety team retrieved him quickly; security chief Lionel Giorgi said the pilot was "safe and sound." The AirScooter, priced around €200,000, is designed to cruise at up to 100 km/h, fly as high as 3,000 metres and remain aloft for roughly two hours thanks to a hybrid electric-thermal propulsion system and an 18.9-litre fuel tank. Zapata had planned to cover the roughly 35-kilometre route to the British coast, repeating the feat he achieved in 2019 on a kerosene-powered Flyboard. Friday’s setback ends three years of development work aimed at demonstrating the AirScooter’s endurance in open-water conditions. Zapata, nicknamed the “flying man,” did not immediately say when he would attempt the crossing again, but his team indicated the flight data gathered during the aborted mission will be used to address the engine issue before any future test.