Franky Zapata fails in attempt to cross the English Channel with ‘Flyboard’

French inventor Franky Zapata has failed in his effort to cross the Channel on his jet-power hoverboard.

Zapata fell into the sea as he attempted to land on a vessel to refuel half way across the Channel.

A member of his team said the movement of the waves required “perfect timing” and the landing platform had shifted “a few centimetres” as he came down.

Franky Zapata was making his attempt on the 110th anniversary of the first powered flight between Britain and France.

“It is a huge disappointment. He made his rendez-vous with the refuelling boat but he must have missed the platform by just a few centimeters,” a member of his team said on BFM television.

Zapata was unharmed, he added.

The landing platform is a metal structure measuring only one square metre. Zapata was supposed to land, throw off his backpack carrying the fuel and strap on another backpack with enough fuel to make it to St Margaret’s Bay near Dover.

Standing on the hoverboard powered by five small jet engines, Zapata took off from Sangatte, France at 0706 GMT and had hoped to reach to Dover in about 20 minutes, flying at up to 140 kilometres (87 miles) per hour at an altitude of between 15 to 20 metres.

He covered 18km and reached the refuelling vessel in the middle of the Channel. The sea was not rough, but a slight movement of the landing platform because of waves threw him off balance and sent him into the water.

Zapata is reported to have fallen into the sea on the English side of the Channel and was rescued “conscious” by divers on the refuelling vessel.

Zapata wowed crowds on 14 July – Bastille Day – flying over a military parade on Paris’s Place de la Concorde in the presence of The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.