Trapped in another traffic jam? Who hasn’t dreamt of taking to the skies and soaring above the gridlock below? Well, rising above the daily grind might be a real option, very soon.

Three companies in the Czech Republic have combined to produce a prototype for an electrical flying bicycle. And the only thing currently stopping them from drifting off ET-style is the battery life. But as the technical director of Duratec Bicycles, Milan Duchek explains, this is not likely to be a long-term issue: “The batteries have a capacity limit. But because the capacity of batteries doubles roughly every 10 years, we can expect that in the future the capacity should be enough for the bike to used for sports, tourism or similar things.”

Its propellers mean the bike weighs in at a hefty 95 kilos and the dummy driver is flown by remote control.

Jan Spatny piloted the bike at a press demonstration in Prague. He noted that, whilst the product’s design features are essentially quite simple, flying the apparatus is not as easy as it looks: “It’s not as easy to control as a toy or RC model. It’s actually quite a complicated thing and you have to take into account that it weighs 95 kilos. You also have to consider inertia.”

Hoping to follow in the footsteps of Charles Lindbergh and the Wright Brothers – if not Icarus – the Czech inventors are trying to soar above an earthbound, common humanity.

Here’s hoping they create a new frontier in commuting in the process.