Christchurch inventor Glenn Martin has made what is believed to be the world's first viable jet pack.
The prototype is being publicly unveiled at America's Oshkosh Air Show in Wisconsin, and it is being touted as a breakthrough in aviation history.
"This is going to change the way people look at aviation and the way people get into aviation," says Martin, Jet Pack inventor.
Back in the sixties there was the 'Bell Rocket Pack', which would only fly for 26 seconds, but Martin's machine is a quantum leap forward, being able to fly for up to half an hour.
He has come up with an entirely new approach in his invention.
"It's a fan jet powered by a piston engine, so very much in the same way you might look at a jet ski turning a propeller," he says .
His invention is already big news in America and organisers of the air show say nothing has attracted quite as much attention as the Martin Jet Pack.
With 20,000 planes on display and 750,000 people attending, the Oshkosh Air Show is the air show in the world.
Most of the major US television networks have expressed interest and a brief You Tube clip of the Jet Pack has already had tens of thousands of hits.
Martin is hoping that after Oshkosh, world wide sales of his flying machine will go stratospheric.
