Hyde County EMS has carried out two live 911 medical responses using Pivotal’s BlackFly eVTOL in rural eastern North Carolina, in what the partners describe as the first operational use of an electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft for routine emergency medical response in the United States. The single-seat ultralight was flown by flight-trained paramedic Quinn Reece and dispatched under a tightly limited pilot deployment in Hyde County.
The missions took place in a county that includes remote communities such as Ocracoke Island, where distance and access can slow ground response. One of the calls involved a diabetic emergency and another a cardiac emergency, with county officials indicating that the aircraft reached one patient around 20 minutes before the ambulance arrived by road. The operation was designed to test a narrow set of dispatch scenarios while crews built experience with the aircraft.
Pivotal’s BlackFly is a Part 103 ultralight eVTOL, and the programme included more than 300 training and proficiency flights before it was used on live calls. Code Blue Resources worked with Hyde County EMS and Pivotal on the deployment, which is being watched closely as a possible model for rural emergency care and future public-safety aviation use.