The future has arrived — for those with around $200,000 to spend — in the form of personal flying vehicles.
Last Thursday, officials of Pivotal, maker of the Helix Personal Flying Vehicle, demonstrated a preproduction model of the 348-pound, carbon fiber aircraft at the Shagwong Marina in Springs. The all-electric vehicle’s eight propellers began to spin, and it soon rose vertically into the sky, the aircraft itself briefly in a near-vertical position. The pilot, Eben Butler, took the Helix to an elevation of 200 to 300 feet and cruised above Three Mile Harbor for around 10 minutes before returning to the marina’s lawn, where he slowly lowered it to the ground, the craft again turning to a near-vertical position before a gentle touchdown.
The Helix, according to the Palo Alto, Calif., manufacturer, can take off and land on grass, asphalt or other pavement, dirt, and landing pads. It is emission-free and extremely quiet for an aircraft, measured at around 70 decibels at 150-foot elevation. Its range is around 20 miles, and it cruises at around 60 miles per hour, according to the manufacturer.
The single-seat craft is classified as an ultralight vehicle under the Federal Aviation Administration’s Part 103 regulations, meaning that it can be operated without a pilot’s license or vehicle registration.
“We have a really wonderful training program,” said Cal Cruickshank, Pivotal’s aircraft sales director. “Three days in a virtual reality simulator, and then day four you’re in the aircraft to fly in. From there, it’s fun to be in.”
“There’s a high level of automation on the aircraft — it’s virtually impossible to lose control,” he said. It has auto-land features and is self-stabilizing, “so you’re protected in a safe flight profile at all times.”
The Helix is operated with a single control stick and features a 12-inch touchscreen display, “so it’s very intuitive,” Mr. Cruickshank said. “You’re just telling it to go up, down, left, right. You can spin like a helicopter and hover.”
“As long as you’re over 200 feet, you could use the main safety feature,” he said. “It’s the last-resort safety feature, which is a ballistic parachute that lowers the whole aircraft to the ground. But a lot of things would have to go wrong. We have redundant backup systems on every component. There’s no single point of failure, so to use a parachute, you’d have to have a lot of really unusual things happen to independent systems before you got there.”
In the event of an emergency landing over water, the Helix will float, he said. A Helix has never crashed, according to the manufacturer.
The aircraft’s exterior can be customized. “We can print anything, and make it look however you want,” Mr. Cruickshank said.
Ultimately, “this is all about a new way to experience the world. It’s flight in its purest form. It’s all about recreation, seeing the world from above, a whole new perspective. We’re happy to be paving the way for this whole new category.”
Pivotal has sold five of its preproduction model vehicles, Mr. Cruickshank said, “to gather real-life experience and feedback from those early-access customers.” The production model will launch in the fall, and the company has taken preorders on it as well.
The Helix has a base price of $190,000, “so it’s priced very competitively to even sportscars these days,” Mr. Cruickshank said. For a $9,000 deposit, buyers can participate in the training program and experience the aircraft, “and then we go from there to progress down the purchase journey.”
Optional add-ons include a transport trailer, vehicle cart, and Level 1 and 2 chargers. “So a little over [$200,000] gets you a good, robust platform.”
“It’s environmentally friendly, it’s friendly to the neighbors, it’s dramatically quieter than a helicopter or an airplane,” he summarized.
Why a demonstration on the South Fork? “You’re not flying this over Manhattan,” Mr. Cruickshank said. “You’re not flying this over downtown L.A. You’re out here enjoying the Hamptons from above. You’re looking at the beaches, the water, the land behind the trees. There’s whales out by Montauk right now, you can go check out the whales. It’s all about finding the right customer in the right place, and the Hamptons is perfect for them.”
