3. Who wants to hover, anyway?

The allure of flying an airplane is that, to state the obvious, it goes into the air. Hovering? Not so much. The point of hovering eludes us. If you want to go very fast on or near the surface, get a motorcycle. They're cheap, legal and easy enough to ride. While hovering craft have long had an exotic appeal, in reality, almost no one wants to hover, nor should they. Very sensibly, they either want to drive or fly. Low-altitude forward motion in the cushion of the air is expensive and inefficient. Its main benefit is that crashing is less catastrophic. More on that in Part 6, Safety.