Passenger drones to take flight as early as July this year

Dubai looks like it will be getting some appropriately futuristic transport with “regular operations” for passenger drones starting as soon as July 2017.

The Chinese-manufactured EHang 184 has been shown off before, in fact at CES 2016 the quadcopter caused quite a stir , but this will be the first instance of the drone actually fulfilling its purpose of passenger transport.

The announcement was made by the Roads and Transportation chief Mattar al-Tayer, stating that the organisation had experimented with the vehicle before , although it’s unclear if he refers to manned or unmanned flight.

The Ehang 184 will ferry a single person up to 31 miles (50km) and it will do so autonomously, relying on a user-programmed destination and 4G communication with a ground-based control room.

There is a catch – you’ll need to weigh under 220lb (100kg) in order to ride, so lay off all the decadent Dubai cuisine if you fancy your chances at flight.