A revolting individual seen in flight (5)
I believe the answer is:
riser
'a revolting individual seen in flight' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe you can see a link between them that I don't see?
'a revolting individual seen in flight' is the wordplay.
'a revolting' says the letters should be written in reverse.
'individual' becomes 'Sir' (Sir is an example).
'seen in flight' becomes 'er' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'sir' written backwards gives 'ris'.
'ris'+'er'='RISER'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for riser that I've seen before include "Person getting out of bed" , "Upright part of stair step" , "Vertical pipe in a building" , "Bit of a step up?" , "Pipe for upward flow" .)