There is a comment from Pubpeer [0] on this research [1] if anyone is curious:
"This is not the first flight of an ion-drive aircraft. Seversky was patenting and flying ionocraft in the 1960s [2], hobbyists have been building them for decades under the name "lifter", and a self-contained device that carries its own power supply was developed by Ethan Krauss in 2006.
MIT's device may be the first ionocraft to use wings for lift, however. The previous devices behaved more like helicopters than airplanes, and did not need wings to stay aloft."
"This is not the first flight of an ion-drive aircraft. Seversky was patenting and flying ionocraft in the 1960s [2], hobbyists have been building them for decades under the name "lifter", and a self-contained device that carries its own power supply was developed by Ethan Krauss in 2006.
MIT's device may be the first ionocraft to use wings for lift, however. The previous devices behaved more like helicopters than airplanes, and did not need wings to stay aloft."
[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0707-9
[1] https://pubpeer.com/publications/020C19C112F2605CEC4B34CA320...
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GijJmIz1G7U