Opener announces Helix eVTOL, changes name to Pivotal

Open­er last week announced Helix Black­Fly, its first scal­able pro­duc­tion vehi­cle, and has renamed itself to Piv­otal, serv­ing the needs of cus­tomers in mul­ti­ple seg­ments.

Piv­otal CEO Ken Karklin said: “Helix presents the next iter­a­tion of 10+ years of inno­vat­ing, test­ing, and deliv­er­ing on the promise to give indi­vid­u­als access to small yet mighty air­craft. The new iden­ti­ty shows the ver­sa­til­i­ty of our sys­tem archi­tec­ture and encap­su­lates both the exhil­a­ra­tion and util­i­ty of flight.”

The base price for a Helix air­craft is $190,000. Begin­ning on Jan­u­ary 9, 2024, Piv­otal cus­tomers will be able to place orders with a deposit of 25% of the pur­chase price. First cus­tomer ship­ments com­mence on June 10, 2024. Based on deliv­ery tim­ing, cus­tomers will select their avail­able train­ing dates.

Like Black­Fly, Helix’s pre-pro­duc­tion pre­de­ces­sor, the Helix offers a tilt-air­craft archi­tec­ture, sim­ple user inter­face, fault tol­er­ance and triple mod­u­lar redun­dan­cy. In addi­tion, the Helix offers:
1) Pow­er and propul­sion improve­ments deliv­er­ing a more robust oper­a­tional flight enve­lope
2) Updat­ed dig­i­tal elec­tron­ics hard­ware, enabling new lev­els of robust­ness and reli­a­bil­i­ty
3) A weight and dura­bil­i­ty opti­mised aerostruc­ture exceed­ing indus­try best prac­tice safe­ty fac­tors
4) A com­pan­ion smart­phone app inte­grat­ing own­er & pilot expe­ri­ence while sim­pli­fy­ing pre-flight checks, cap­tur­ing flight his­to­ry and man­ag­ing charg­ing and air­craft ser­vice
5) A redesigned canopy and flight deck fea­tur­ing with an inte­grat­ed dis­play and improve­ments in com­fort and safe­ty
Enhanced non-flight-cloud con­nec­tiv­i­ty to improve main­te­nance, vehi­cle telem­at­ics, charg­ing and own­er asset man­age­ment
6) A durable liv­ery reduc­ing the effects of weath­er, age and solar load­ing while extend­ing the life of the struc­ture and improv­ing pilot com­fort
7) Prod­uct options includ­ing a trans­port trail­er, fast charg­ing, avi­a­tion or GSM radios, ADS‑B, cus­tom liv­er­ies, and bea­con lights
8) Sup­port for future field-replace­able next gen­er­a­tion bat­ter­ies to extend range and endurance

Black­Fly, Helix’s pre-pro­duc­tion pre­de­ces­sor

Designed to com­ply with FAA Part 103 (Ultra­light) cat­e­go­ry in the US, pilots can fly the Helix in Class G air­space over uncon­gest­ed areas in the day­time and are not required to have a pilot licence. Piv­otal cus­tomers must com­plete com­pre­hen­sive ini­tial and recur­rent flight train­ing to sup­port safe oper­a­tions in all sit­u­a­tions, from the every­day to the unex­pect­ed.

Clark Thomp­son, one of Pivotal’s Ear­ly Access cus­tomers, added: “I have been fol­low­ing the evo­lu­tion of eVTOL air­craft for quite some time. Piv­otal is the only com­pa­ny deliv­er­ing an intel­li­gent, pow­er­ful, and capa­ble recre­ation­al prod­uct to the mar­ket. I’m eager to be a part of the Piv­otal pilot com­mu­ni­ty, take my air­craft out, and share my expe­ri­ences.”

In May, Open­er Aero appoint­ed Ken Karklin as its new CEO, assum­ing day-to-day lead­er­ship of the com­pa­ny and join­ing its board of direc­tors, while founder Mar­cus Leng stepped down from the role.

Ken Karklin joins Open­er as CEO, with com­pa­ny founder Mar­cus Leng step­ping down from role