[Palmer Luckey zipped through his Jetson One flight training in under 50 minutes. / Photo from Jetson]
Palmer Luckey, who co-founded Oculus and the defense tech firm Anduril, has just taken delivery of the very first Jetson One personal aircraft and wasted no time in taking it for a test flight.
The electric VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing) aircraft flew gracefully over a green field in Carlsbad, California. Following his successful flight, he received a special Jetson wings pin to celebrate the moment.
Luckey, known for his diverse collection of vehicles that includes helicopters and even a retired Navy warship, has now added a high-tech flying machine to his impressive fleet.
The Jetson One first caught people’s attention back in 2021, and now, nearly four years later, it’s made its first global handover to Luckey, marking a significant step forward for both the company and personal aviation.
In a video of his flight, you can see Luckey making the aircraft officially his by removing the protective film from the controls. With some help from Jetson’s founder Tomasz Patan and CEO Stéphan D’haene, he donned a helmet, powered up the aircraft, and took off effortlessly.
He enjoyed several circuits above the field before safely landing back on the ground. The Jetson One retails for $128,000 and requires an $8,000 deposit. What’s cool is that you don’t even need a pilot’s license to fly it! That said, new buyers will have to wait, as production for 2025 and 2026 is already booked, pushing any new deliveries to 2027.
Even though the original delivery was projected for 2023, it took a bit longer to arrive, as noted by Patan. Before his flight, Luckey completed 50 minutes of training—an impressive feat that speaks to his familiarity with complex tech.
Jetson has labeled this event as “the beginning of a new era in personal aviation.” In a chat with Business Insider in 2022, Patan mentioned that they designed the Jetson One with U.S. regulations in mind and that a whopping 85% of their customers are Americans.
“We were blown away by the interest,” he shared. “Our goal is revolutionizing transportation by shifting ground travel into the air, making urban life better for everyone.”
According to the company, the Jetson One allows for up to 20 minutes of flight time, tops out at speeds of 63 mph, and can soar to heights of 1,500 feet.
In early 2023, Jetson secured $15 million in a seed funding round driven by angel investors, joining a wave of electric VTOL startups like Joby and Archer Aviation. However, some pioneers like Kitty Hawk and Pivotal—supported by Google co-founder Larry Page—have hit some bumps along the way or shuttered operations altogether.
Luckey has always been a bit of a tech mad scientist. As a kid, he fashioned gadgets like coil guns and Tesla coils, often joking about it being a miracle he’s still alive after all his experiments.
He first made headlines with the founding of Oculus, the groundbreaking VR company that was swallowed by Facebook, and later co-founded Anduril, a firm at the forefront of drone tech. His new Jetson One purchase is just a latest novelty in an already quirky collection; he talked in a 2024 Bloomberg interview about owning a former U.S. Navy vessel, six helicopters, and even a 1985 Marine Corps Humvee.
And he’s no stranger to ambitious tech ventures—one of his outlandish concepts even included a VR headset that would supposedly fry the wearer’s brain with fake charges if they failed in a game (thankfully, this idea never hit the market).
As an early adoptee, Luckey’s Jetson One escapade highlights that he’s still blazing trails in technology, all while listening to Kelly Clarkson.
