The World's First Jetson Personal Aerial Vehicle Race Certainly Looked Like Something From A Sci-Fi Cartoon

The promise of personal flying machines has been around for decades. From flying cars to jetpacks, the future always seemed to promise a traffic-jam-free ride to work that left the roads far below. The truth of the matter is that personal flying machines (excluding private planes, of course) are not as simple as strapping a pack of volatile rocket fuel to your back and soaring off to work like something from, well... The Jetsons. 

Now a pioneering company is the latest to claim that it can change the way we travel. Jetson's Jetson One is a personal aircraft, or, more correctly, an electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing vehicle (eVTOL). It's powered by eight electrical motors and built from aluminum and carbon fiber. Its prowess was demonstrated at 2025's UP.Summit. This is an airshow with a difference. UP.Summit is an invitation-only event that brings together 300 of the world's leading transport innovators. This year's event took place at Bentonville Municipal Airport, Arkansas, and also featured a community day when the summit opened its doors to the general public.

Among the star attractions of the open-day show was the world's first Jetson ONE race. The four-aircraft pylon race was designed to demonstrate the craft's technological maturity. Among the pilots taking part in the race was Tomasz Patan, Jetson's Chief Technical Officer and a co-founder of the company. While the personal aerial vehicle race certainly looked like a scene from a sci-fi film, Jetson is betting that the Jetson ONE becomes more than just an airshow curiosity and steps up to become a viable future transport option. 

Jetson describes its aircraft as a Formula One racing car for the sky. While saying the ONE offers Formula One performance requires a generous stretching of the imagination, it does pack some impressive stats, nevertheless. The Jetson weighs in at a mere 121 pounds without batteries and 253 pounds including them. The batteries power eight motors and propellers and with a pilot of an appropriate weight onboard (210 pounds maximum), the aircraft has a software-limited top speed of 63 mph. 

One area where the aircraft does borrow heavily from race car design is its safety shell, which is designed to protect the pilot should the worst happen. Other safety features include a ballistic parachute system, an auto-landing system, a hands-free hover system, and the ability to keep flying with the loss of one motor. For the bravehearted among you, the Jetson ONE has a maximum ceiling of over 1,500 feet. Surprisingly, despite these performance stats, there is no need for a pilot's license to take to the air in one of these. 

Jetson has designed the entire flight to be controlled one-handed using a four-axis joystick. Along with a unique flight computer, the company says the intuitive flight control system means the fundamentals of flight-control can be mastered in under five minutes. The advertised flight time for the aircraft is around 20 minutes. However, before you rush out and buy one, the price tag is $128,000, and the earliest shipping date is in 2028.

The first Jetson ONE customer is Palmer Luckey, the cofounder of Oculus and Anduril, which manufactured the Fury autonomous air vehicle. So, he's someone who understands the industry. Palmer Luckey received his eVTOL in early September 2025, two years later than its initial schedule of 2023. Despite the company's claims that flying one of these could be learned in "under five minutes", a more generous 50 minutes were allocated for Palmer's flight training. After which, the motors were started, and Luckey completed a circuit of a grassy field before landing. At the culmination of the training and the test flight, he was awarded a Jetson's "wing pin." 

Witnessing the entire day was Tomasz Patan, and Jetson's CEO, Stéphan D'haene. With the first Jetson ONE race taking place in the same month, it's certainly been a busy time for the company. Although it has an American base in Palo Alto, the company was originally formed in Poland in 2017 by Patan and Peter Ternström, before relocating to Italy. With the delivery of its first system, Jetson stated that it's the "beginning of Jetson's global rollout and a bold leap forward in personal aviation." 

The company has reported that over 500 orders have been placed for the futuristic aircraft. And with a high-profile tech name like Palmer Luckey as the inaugural customer, Jetson's future looks promising. With a healthy order book and high-profile customers, the age of personal flight might be edging closer to reality.