BlackFly groupies

He first saw the electric “airplane” or “flying car”—as he and his daughter Heather insist on calling the Pivotal BlackFly—in 2018. Then 80 years old, John had been flying everything he could since he was a young man; building a successful Maryland/D.C.-based real estate agency afforded him to own a fleet of aircraft including the 1946 Aeronca Champ he first soloed in at age 18. But seeing the all-electric, mysterious BlackFly designed by Canadian engineer Marcus Leng at EAA AirVenture, John became consumed with being the first to fly it. He shared his passion with his daughter and the two became BlackFly groupies, following the company (then called Opener) obsessively as the eVTOL went through testing and development. They even attended airshows wearing BlackFly hats and T-shirts they designed. John told Leng through calls and emails he “must” be the first to own one.

And when the world’s first ultralight fixed-wing, all-electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft was available for purchase, the Chirteas were first in line. Google co-founder Larry Page beat them out as one of the first owners, but John and Heather Chirtea are the first and only father/daughter team to buy and fly a BlackFly.

She’s the first female BlackFly pilot, he’s the oldest, and they were one of the only buyers of the aircraft before it was renamed the Helix. They took delivery of their BlackFly in July 2024, at Eagle Crest Aerodrome in Milton, Delaware, where John and his wife, Cindy, live. And Leng and his wife came from Canada to help them celebrate.

Why it’s a ‘flying car’

Let’s get the housekeeping out of the way first: The Chirteas are adamant that their BlackFly is a “flying car.” Heather is especially insistent. Her frequent flights around the area and to show off their aircraft illustrate—for her at least—why this is the right name for this craft.

“There’s no road here where we flew this morning,” she says. “You don’t need a runway, and you don’t need a road to drive on. You go from point A to point B, which is the secret to any car. No runway, no road, and you have a BlackFly. The air is the road.”

“When Heather does her social media things she’s talking to 15,000 people, they all tell her ‘Don’t call it a flying car,’ or they say, ‘It’s a drone’ or that it has to have tires or wheels,” her father says. “It’s not a drone because it’s manned and it doesn’t have wheels because it’s not on a road. Leng said to me, ‘I’m not going to make a bad car and I’m not going to make a bad airplane; what I’m going to make is a good flying car.’ Is there a better word for it? We’re open to suggestions.”

Four generators charge the BlackFly for 45 minutes. Then the battery range—if they fly straight and smooth and don’t hover too much (a drain on the charge)—is about 20 miles. John says he has not noticed a discernible change in his electric bill, which is a surprise, especially for how many times this pair takes to the sky. They spend long afternoons trading places in the BlackFly, flying, coming back to recharge, taking off again. The community members of the airpark stop by and watch the takeoffs and landings. Everyone is curious about the BlackFly.

“We fly up and down Route 1, the major north/south highway here, and the cars stop. They come here, they pull into our yard, and they say ‘can we watch?’ And we say, absolutely, take pictures,” Chirtea says.

How does it fly?

When his wish came true, John and Heather went to Pivotal headquarters in Palo Alto, California, for training. The two weeks in a simulator were capped by their first flights, and then Washington state pilot Tim Lum (the first buyer) flew the BlackFly to Delaware.

Both Chirteas are private pilots—John for more than 70 years and Heather for about seven. So, they look at flying very differently. It took a while for John to convince his daughter to fly, but once he did, she was hooked. However, Heather’s experience growing up with video games and raising two sons who are gamers made the BlackFly training easier for her. Because the BlackFly is controlled by just one of two joysticks, it’s more intuitive to her. John is a lifelong pilot. He tends to overthink things.

“That is an aircraft that requires a lot of study and training,” he says, pointing to his Aeronca Champ in his hangar. “This [BlackFly] you just get a little bit of training and off you go. I’ve dreamed of this literally all my life. The Champ was my magic carpet, but with the BlackFly I’m thinking that’s my magic carpet now, and it’s wonderful.”

“I love the magic carpet metaphor,” Heather says. “And I totally feel the same way that it is like some sort of floating magic when you’re up there, but I would equate it somewhat differently. In the way pilots are trained to monitor every little thing, the BlackFly is different. If I want to tilt a little bit to the left or go up or down in altitude, I have a gauge on my dashboard that shows me exactly how to do that. I have controls that with the slightest amount of motion, moves in any direction.”

The BlackFly has a triple radar and GPS system that automates flight controls. “The computers take a lot of the control out of the hands of the pilot and put it in the hands of the computer and help maintain your altitude and speed and make sure you don’t go too fast,” says Heather. She says a flight in the BlackFly is relaxing. “If you are a control freak, as most pilots are, you want control over everything. But if you are everyman, a consumer, a computer gamer—if you are you or I or my mom or my kids, you could fly this thing. The computer takes care of all the minutest details.” 

A thorough preflight is still required, and of course, the charging of the four batteries, but once out of the hangar and on the field, the flight is simple. There’s only the joystick to control. The Chirteas keep cheap, pink “Barbie” transmitters in hand and on the ground, but besides saying “I’m ready” there isn’t much to communicate. For the uninitiated, the powerful liftoff of the BlackFly—it tilts backward and leaps off the ground—is a little unnerving, but then at 100 feet agl it levels off and buzzes smoothly through the air. On the ground it appears bulbous like the black fly it is, but looking at it in the air, the shape changes dramatically. Now it is a four-legged Helix, and it gracefully plies the sky. Coming in for a landing, it pauses, then hovers and glides to the ground.

“When I land, that’s the easiest part,” Heather says. “I hit my trigger and it’s hand’s off. In an airplane, holy moly, I’ve got to worry about my altitude. I’ve got to be 750 feet before I turn base, before I turn final, I have to be at 500. I’ve got to have flaps down. I have to have so many things I have to control. If you assess your personality and you say, hey, I have to have control, stay a VFR pilot.”

Since receiving their BlackFly, the Chirteas have become social media stars. Heather records and posts her flights on TikTok and has videos posted that have received more than 2.8 million views (@soflyadventures).

Fly/drive

Heather’s big goal is to fly the BlackFly across the country. That seems crazy when the range is 20 miles, but they’ve been doing “fly/drives.” John puts the generators on the back of a pickup truck and Heather flies 20 miles at a time, landing in fields where her father meets her, and they recharge.

They recently did a four-hop-a-day fly/drive to a fly-in in Spring Hill, Maryland. “It’s one of the best private airports in Maryland. It’s about 30 miles from here. It took us four stops to get there. The first stop was Georgetown [Delaware]. We charged up for 45 minutes. We went to the side of a road and Heather found a great empty field. She dropped in and cars were stopping on the side roads. We went to Laurel Airport (N06) and did the same thing. Another stop and people are going crazy when they see it, and then we were at Spring Hill and did a couple of demonstration flights and then came back home. Stop, stop, stop, and stop all the way back here,” John says.“The Champ was my magic carpet, but with the BlackFly, I’m thinking that’s my magic carpet now. It’s wonderful.” —John Chirtea

They do not fly any farther than when the charge drops around 25 percent. They agreed that the margin is realistic and allows them time and energy to return to base or a selected field. And if there’s a headwind, it’s too much of a fight. The BlackFly is amphibious, but the pair have not attempted water landing even though they are 10 miles from the Atlantic Ocean and surrounded by tidewater lakes.

“I took it out to the edge of the water shortly after I started flying it. But when I headed back and got here, I was about 20 percent on the battery level,” he says. “As I’ve said she’s a better pilot in this than me, and she’ll not go much under 20 percent power. She called me from a cornfield about a mile away. She was at 17 percent and said she wasn’t going to risk it. I probably would have risked it for the extra mile to get here, but it would have been at 10 percent.”

Flying the future

“It’s an idea whose time has come,” says Heather. “It’s the first time that everyman can take to the skies. I don’t need a pilot’s license; I only need a driver’s license. People say it only goes 20 miles. Well first we had the Wright brothers and then we went to space, and now we have a flying car. It’s the next big step for society. I feel like a pioneer, blessed to be one of the first people to participate in this incredible transformation.”

She and her father created a “manifesto” that they carry along with them in the BlackFly. Heather wrote “The story of the flying car,” printed on yellowed paper, sealed with wax and a feather. It’s spiritual, imploring the reader to “soar” and to believe in their imagination and the possibilities of their future. She says the future of flight in personal aircraft is destiny and that she and her father are contributing architects.

“I just turned 87. What have I got left? Another 20 years? So, in 20 years I am going to see—we are all going to see—dramatic changes in aviation,” says John. “I want to take it up when I’m 90, when I’m 95. I want to take a Helix up. It’s fun. We fly for fun.”

How about this, John? It’s a Personal Fun Mobile—PFM.

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