One of the things I loved doing when I was writing the first two Johnny Graphic novels was my research about the age of the flying boat. That was in the 1920s and ’30s, when the big international airline routes were being flown by aircraft that landed and took off in water—planes like the great Pan Am Clipper, the Boeing 314. Johnny and his chums spent a lot of time flying around the globe in the Como Eagle (my version of the 314) and the tri-motor Gianelli float plane (that was a copy of an Italian aircraft).

So when I run across any news relating to flying boats or other aquatic aircraft, I like to share it here. And today in The Verge, I ran across this item about a new amphibious seaplane called the Icon A5.

The basic A5 will sell for $200,000, which for a new airplane is not that expensive. As the article suggests, maybe folks will buy one of these instead of that new Ferrari. It’s a simple aircraft meant to be flown during the day, at lower altitude, in clear weather, outside of any heavy traffic. You can learn to fly it in only 20 hours. It’ll break down to travel on a trailer and the engine even runs on ordinary gasoline.

I guess I’ll just have to wait to get that Ferrari. I’ll take the Icon  A5 instead.