Guy builds people-carrying drone, uses it to snowboard and fly in a Santa suit

Why make your way up a mountain on that slow, early-20th-century contraption called the chairlift when a drone can fly you there in a fraction of the time? Instead of waiting for Uber and eHang to develop their passenger-carrying “drone” vehicles, one part-time snowboarder/full-time vlogger decided to build his own human-carrying drone and have himself hauled up a mountain.

“No one in the world sells a drone that can lift a human being, so we built our own,” says 35-year-old YouTuber Casey Neistat in a video showing him snowboarding across the Finnish mountainside. Neistat, presumably hyped from selling his video-sharing app, Beme, to CNN for $25 million, decided to channel his showmanship with another publicity stunt — this time wearing a Santa suit.

It took almost a year to build the 16-rotor machine dressed up in Christmas lights, but judging from the video, it generates enough lift to not just drag Neistat around as if he’s wakeboarding on snow, but even lift him off the ground 30 to 40 feet over rooftops.