When Sinatra sang “Come Fly with Me,” he couldn’t have imagined anything like the Pivotal Helix.
The Helix is a single-seat, electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOL. And where dozens of eVTOL startups have failed to take flight, Pivotal says it’s on track to deliver its first customer model in the first quarter of 2026—almost certainly the first eVTOL maker to reach this milestone. Helix predecessor, Blackfly, has taken more than 1,000 piloted flights, and its maker has trained more than 50 pilots to fly this unique aircraft with eight electrified rotors whirling on a pair of detachable wings.
Those trainees now include a new set of customers: Fire departments and paramedics, who see intriguing possibilities in emergency responses, including landing in places helicopters can’t reach, or in which the machines would be too disruptive. For example, the Helix recently flew a trio of safety demonstrations in California with fire departments in San Bernardino, Southern Marin, and Cosumnes. One demo flight ended with a discreet touchdown in a residential cul-de-sac in Thousand Oaks.
“You couldn’t dream of doing that in a helicopter,” says Ken Karklin, chief executive of the Palo Alto, Calif.–based Pivotal, due to the disruptive noise and rotor wash of a fossil-fueled chopper.
Testing by NASA engineers, Karklin says, showed the Helix sends only about 70 decibels of sound to the ground from a 150-foot flight altitude.
“When the Helix passes overhead at 200 feet [61 meters], you may not hear it at all,” he says.
The San Bernardino County Fire Department says the Helix highlights the potential of eVTOLs to dramatically reduce response times, and overcome barriers such as traffic congestion, long rural distances or hostile natural terrain.
“This aircraft represents a powerful new tool in time-sensitive trauma care,” the department said in a media release.
Two Weeks of Training and Then Up, Up, and Away
Skepticism continues to swirl around eVTOLs, prompted in part by their short electric range and limited capacity for people or cargo. Many eVTOL proponents pitch a future of short-hop air taxis, essentially Ubers of the sky. Those backers tend to downplay massive hurdles in securing certification from the Federal Aviation Administration, which has struggled to come up with safety, airspace, and other guidelines for eVTOLs. Another challenge will be finding and training qualified pilots who will undoubtedly demand more pay than an Uber jockey.
The Helix’s secret sauce, according to Karklin, is accessibility—in technical, regulatory and financial terms. “We’re flying prolifically today, and the [eVTOL] companies chasing FAA certification aren’t close,” he says.
Built largely from carbon fiber, and weighing just under 158 kilograms, the Helix conforms with the FAA’s rules for ultralight aircraft. That means the Helix does not need formal certification, and buyers don’t need a pilot’s license to take to the skies. IEEE Spectrum’s Glenn Zorpette flew the Helix’s predecessor, the BlackFly, in California in 2022, and was blown away by the experience. (The company was then under a previous corporate identity as Opener, founded by BlackFly inventor Marcus Leng).
Pivotal conducted a demonstration of its Helix eVTOL for the San Bernardino County (Calif.) Fire Protection District in June 2025.Bobby Montalvo/San Bernardino County Fire Protection District
After a two-week training course that includes flight simulations, buyers graduate to unsupervised solo flights. Then they’re free, under the FAA’s ultralight rules, to fly during daylight, as long as they avoid congested areas, busy airports, or restricted airspace. The company plans to back sales with recurrent training to keep pilots up to speed.
Unlike most eVTOLs, the Helix doesn’t move its rotors to adjust its attitude. Instead, the entire airframe tilts upward for vertical takeoff and landing, and shifts to horizontal to cruise up to 32 kilometers (20 miles) at a software-limited 103-kilometer-per-hour (64 mile-per-hour) top speed. The design helps make the Helix less daunting for rookie pilots; a single by-wire joystick controls every aspect of flight. Karklin says pilots can spend their time hovering, cruising, or banking, rather than constantly monitoring instruments that include battery state of charge and navigation.
“They can keep eyeballs outside the canopy on a beautiful landscape,” Karklin says.
Compared with the third-generation BlackFly aircraft, the Helix has about 97 percent new components, including the cylindrical cells in its 9-kilowatt-hour battery. The Helix can fly at higher altitudes and in thinner, warmer air without its motors overheating at high rpm’s: Picture Denver or Lake Tahoe, where even ground takeoffs begin at a mile or more above sea level. Improvements include power and propulsion gains, automotive-grade batteries and electronics, and a redesigned monocoque, canopy, and flight instruments. A smartphone app records data on every flight, and manages charging and service. As with the BlackFly, the Helix’s wings can be quickly detached and stored on a car trailer, along with the pod-shaped fuselage, for convenient transport.
While the Blackfly can cover 32 km in ideal conditions, Karklin’s personal best is 28 km. The owner of an earthbound EV might be tempted to push it, but the stakes are higher in the sky: Pivotal’s training instructs pilots to find a safe landing spot with no less than 20 percent of battery charge remaining. Proprietary chemistry ensures cells can deliver 100 percent of rated discharge all the way to that 20 percent barrier, ensuring no loss of thrust as the battery is depleted.
Pivotal believes its Helix eVTOL is a natural transportation mode for emergency responders who need to get to residential addresses quickly and land without the noise and rotor wash of a conventional helicopter.Pivotal
A Hybrid eVTOL is in the Works for Potential Military Customers
Triple redundancy in the computer flight controllers helps ensure safety. If all else fails, the Helix’s pilot-operated parachute can slow its descent to about five meters per second. That’s swift enough to destroy the carbon-fiber fuselage in an emergency landing, but gentle enough to let the pilot unlatch the canopy and walk away injury-free in 97 percent of test scenarios.
And the Helix can now carry 100 kg (220 pounds) of payload between its pilot and assorted gear, a 10 percent gain over the BlackFly. “We’re now up to carrying the 80th percentile American male in weight, up from 51 percent,” Karklin says with a smile.
For beefier first responders, that still doesn’t seem to leave much room for gear. Karklin notes an EMT’s “go bag” of medical supplies can weigh up to 25 kg, in part because they’ve never been created with mass in mind. Working with paramedics, the company has created an optimized medical kit that weights as little as 7 kg, including a small defibrillator. And if the Helix can’t haul as much equipment as an ambulance, it can get a first responder on the ground quicker to save or stabilize a patient, or to establish communications and survey the scene for rescuers to come.
The vehicle trailer for the Pivotal Helix eVTOL is part of a package that adds $50,000 to the cost of the basic aircraft.Pivotal
The company is taking deposits for a Helix with a base cost of US $190,000 but reaching roughly $260,000 with options such as a travel trailer, a Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) radio, or an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadast (ADS-B) radio system.
Karklin acknowledges the limitations of today’s lithium-ion batteries to get aircraft off the ground and keep them flying over meaningful distances. “There’s nothing that beats the energy density of diesel fuel, with Jet-A right behind,” he says, referring to the kerosene-based aviation fuel. So Pivotal is also developing a new BlackFly with a gas-electric hybrid power train, strictly for demonstration purposes for now, that might range up to 322 km (200 miles), for potential defense customers.
Yet Karklin is bullish on the potential for simple, plug-in rechargeable eVTOLs. The company’s new development program, he discloses, is training EMTs from two fire departments to fly its Helixes, and seeking other customers in the first-responder space.
“Electric aviation has a rich future ahead of it,” he says.
This article was updated on 12 September 2025 to correct a noise figure and better distinguish between Blackfly and Helix stats.