Life is a skyway.
The pipe dream of flying cars is no longer science fiction — they are here and now as both private buyers and the military are obsessed with the hot commodity for everyday people.
Known by their technical name eVTOLs (electric vehicle take-off and landing), a new prototype model is soaring the popular future travel concept to higher expectations.
The BlackFly, a state-of-the-art piece of flying equipment made by the company Pivotal, has been delivered to five different owners on the East and West Coasts, plus the Midwest. In addition, the United States Air Force took eight of the prototype models.
“When I took off from my front yard, I felt an indescribable sense of awe,” recent Massachusets owner Patrik M. bragged in a Pivotal release.
While those models were prototypes, Pivotal has already created a successor to the BlackFly, called the Helix, which can be yours for $190,000.
And what makes the nearly 350-pound vessel — a Honda Civic weighs closer to 3,000 pounds — really special is that just about anyone can fly one thanks to its FAA ultralight classification.
“Operators of ultralight vehicles are not required to meet any aeronautical knowledge, age, or experience requirements to operate those vehicles,” the agency’s code states.
On top of that, the BlackFly is capable of getting airborne from surfaces like pavement, grass, and dirt according to FlyingMag. A company demo also showed the landing gear free eVTOL set off and land on a beach.
Tim Lum, a 61-year-old retiree in rural Washington state is also all in on the concept, one allowing users to glide at comparatively low altitudes and up to 55 knots — equivalent to a highway speed of 63.3 miles per hour.
“It’s stunning, very dramatic,” he told New York Magazine. In the year he has owned his BlackFly, Lum has successfully accomplished 450 flights typically in the scenic woodlands 40 miles around his home.
“I’ve set up four charging stations in my valley, so I can do five flights by lunch,” he told Robb Report. “And once people in other parts of the area found out I was here, they’ve invited me to fly over their land.”
For the time being, it’s likely that scenic empty spaces will be the primary home for eVTOLs rather than the skies of the Big Apple or elsewhere. The FAA clamps down that “no person may operate an ultralight vehicle over any congested area of a city, town, or settlement, or over any open air assembly of persons.”
Flights are also restricted to daytime only.
As for what the cockpit looks like, you’re flying with two joysticks, a flight data-filled iPad, plus a knob to activate an emergency parachute.
“There’s a lot of technology in the back end,” company software developer Greg Kerr told Robb Report.
“The aircraft is designed to operate in a simple, intuitive way, but it’s a layered and sophisticated platform,” he added, mentioning that it was designed with a failsafe “to mitigate possible failures.”
