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It’s not a drone! It’s a flying car

Father-daughter from Milton say Black Fly is future of flight
January 3, 2025

John and Heather Chirtea want people to know one thing about their flying car: it’s not a drone.

If the all-electric Black Fly is circling around the Eagle Crest Aerodrome near Milton, one of them is at the controls.

“I don’t want to be shot down,” said John Chirtea.

He is referring to the recent unexplained drone sightings around the Northeast.

The Chirteas are father and daughter. Both are experienced pilots. They have simple explanations for the alleged UFOs.

“Probably three or four people get together and say, ‘Let’s go have a little fun at night,’” John said. “We can see them. You’ve got fancy cameras that can define them down to the smallest bolt. So, what’s the issue?”

“They are legal drones. They have red and green lights on them. Like aliens are coming down and calling the FAA and finding out how to light their drones,” Heather said.

The Chirteas know their Black Fly looks like something out of this world. The aircraft is the only flying car that is shipping to consumers right now. The Chirteas were the fourth out of five current owners to get one.

“We call anything in the ultralight category a flying car, because it only requires a driver’s license to fly it,” Heather said. “But this is the battle on social media. Do we call it a flying car, an octo-copter or a helicopter?”

John, 86, is the oldest flying car pilot in the country. Heather is the first female flying car pilot.

The pair always work as a team to get the Black Fly ready for flight.

The aircraft is technically an electric vertical takeoff and landing (EVTOL) ultralight. It is built by Pivotal Aero in Palo Alto, Calif. It was invented by Marcus Leng, who also invented memory foam.

The Chirteas spent two weeks on the West Coast learning how to fly the Black Fly.

“You’re learning in a simulator. Then you get in and there’s nobody around, you’re in here by yourself, and you think this looks exactly like the simulator,” John said. “You take off, hover and land quite a few times and you get the feel of it.”

“It’s really jarring, at first,” Heather said.

The Black Fly is made of lightweight carbon fiber and weighs only 348 pounds. John and Heather use a stepladder to climb into the cockpit.

They communicate from air to ground using pink Barbie walkie-talkies. “Two for $29 at Walmart,” Heather said.

The Black Fly is their $200,000 toy.

“It’s just great. When you transition from hover to cruise, you’re just free to fly wherever,” John said. “That’s when we head out over the highway and see how much attention we can get from the drivers.”

“I’m going to go up to 40 feet then spiral my way to 100,” said Heather as she powered up the eight electric motors.

The Black Fly jumps into the air. It takes off and lands almost vertically. No runway required.

“We can go about 25 miles, about 20 to 25 minutes, depending on the wind,” John said. “We’ve got a rule, when you hit 75% battery, come back home.”

The top speed is 80 mph.

The Black Fly can fly as high as 4,000 feet. Heather said she has done it; John has only reached 500 feet.

“If you get to 4,000, you have to come straight back down or you won’t have enough battery,” Heather said. 

The Black Fly has amphibious floats, meaning it can land on water. Neither of the Chirteas has checked that box.

The aircraft has a ballistic parachute that can safely land the vehicle in case of emergency.

That’s the flying part. The car part is a little more complicated.

The Black fly is a flying car, but it is not street legal. It does not even have wheels.

“It’s not a plane and a car, it’s a flying car. The air is the road, so it doesn’t need wheels,” Heather said.

It can land almost anywhere, but would need a trailer to go any farther.

The Black Fly has made John and Heather social media stars.

Videos on Heather’s So Fly Adventures YouTube channel have millions of hits. She said they are building their social media audience for bigger things.

“We’re going to travel across the country and do a TV show, going from place to place. We have [Black Fly] pilot No. 1 in Washington. My twins are our tour managers down in Texas. They’re also musicians, so they play music and we’ll fly,” Heather said. 

The Chirteas made three flights around Eagle Crest the day the Cape Gazette visited.

Heather went live on TikTok during the third flight.

“That was the nation’s first flying car coming in for a landing,” she told the 1,000 viewers who had joined in to watch in just a few minutes.

John, who is a retired real estate developer from the Washington, D.C. area, owns two other, conventional aircraft.

He said the Black Fly is the wave of the future.

“There’s no doubt we are on the cutting edge of electric aircraft; even big aircraft are going electric,” he said. 

“This is the first flying car. Another generation will get it faster. It’ll get longer. It’ll get better,” Heather said.

 

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