Paramedic uses eVTOL aircraft to reach 911 calls ahead of ambulance in North Carolina

A flight-trained paramedic in rural Hyde County, North Carolina, has used a small electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft to respond to real emergency calls, according to the county's emergency medical services department. Paramedic Quinn Reece flew a Pivotal BlackFly, a single-seat eVTOL, directly to GPS coordinates near two incidents, landing close to patients and carrying equipment including a cardiac monitor, airway supplies and a primary response bag.

On one of the calls, Reece reached the scene about 20 minutes ahead of a ground ambulance and began providing advanced life support before other responders arrived, Hyde County EMS said. The department described the flights as the first use of an eVTOL for routine emergency medical response in the United States, though it did not claim any formal regulatory designation for that milestone.

Hyde County covers nearly 1,500 square miles of land and water, a geography that officials say can slow conventional ambulance response. The intent behind the program is not to transport patients by air, but to get a paramedic and critical equipment to a scene faster than a vehicle could manage over long, sparsely populated routes.

The county worked with the aircraft's manufacturer, Pivotal, along with emergency-services firm Code Blue Resources and aviation program manager Akute Networks to build procedures for the missions. More than 300 training exercises were completed before operational flights began.

Hyde County EMS Chief Brook Cox said the missions showed that distance could be overcome to reach patients sooner. The BlackFly is a small, single-occupant aircraft and differs substantially from the larger air taxi designs being developed elsewhere in the eVTOL industry for passenger transport.