Flyboard Air: New hoverboard actually works and uses a turbine engine to fly its rider around, creator claims

Franky Zapata created the Flyboard — the water-powered flying machines that are used on holiday resorts and elsewhere

A man claims to have created a real hoverboard, perhaps the first working one ever made.

The new equipment appears to use a jet turbine engine to fly around. It doesn’t seem to need to be attached to anything else, and has a claimed maximum height of 10,000 feet and can fly at nearly 100 miles per hour.

The hoverboard is made by Franky Zapata. He’s the creator of the popular Flyboards that are used at holiday resorts and other places — those use jets of water shooting down to allow their wearer to hover in the air.

But the new creation allows people to fly around with no connection to the ground and no obvious impact on the floor beneath.

That means that Mr Zapata’s hoverboard is by far the most convincing and authentic version of the hoverboard that has yet been seen. The last year or so has seen a run of equipment looking to recreate the Back To The Future experience — but they have all forced people to stay close to the ground.

The new hoverboard appears to get around that by using a turbine engine that gets its fuel from a backpack worn by the rider.

The hoverboard is still only being used over lakes, just in case something went wrong with it. But it appears that is a safety precaution rather than a necessity, unlike previous attempts at creating hoverboards.