Soaring a couple hundred feet off the ground, alone in a small aircraft with no piloting experience, sounds like a nightmare to some. But to me, flying solo has been a fantasy since a young Tom Cruise conquered the skies in an F-14. Pivotal, and a half-dozen competitors in the emerging eVTOL space, have created one-seat, electric aircraft to release your inner Maverick, with no formal flight training. But the Silicon Valley company’s 10-day program for owners, pilot or not, is a mandatory part of the purchase agreement. It involves about 40 hours of flight training in a simulator, basically so you can prove you know the one-person aircraft well enough to fly it. That’s followed by 10 real flights. The BlackFly (pre-production version of the Helix that I trained in and flew) has been around for 14 years, though it’s a much different aircraft than the garage-built plane Marcus Leng first flew in..
