I call bullsmeg. Sure , it might get those 110 N/kW (though I doubt it , air is a lot harder to ionize than say argon ) but there's an upper limit to the thrust you can get from an ion drive before it starts arcing all over the grids.
I really doubt you can get more than a couple of thousands of newtons out of it - which is useless for anything bigger than a basket
Not to mention the batteries will be heavy enough to make it impossible to lift
Edit: going through their paper now - having the uni's publish accounts really helps
Edit2 : original paper here :
http://lae.mit.edu/uploads/LAE_report_series/2012/LAE-2012-008-T.pdfEdit3 : Just as I expected , overhyped by media. The paper is quite nice , don't get me wrong , but it does show that there's a limit to how much you can scale the thrust , and they've worked on milinewton designs , not something powerful enough to lift a jet. Still , downloaded , bookmarked and archived for later read when I've got the time to do it properly.