Meet the Teams: Team LEO Flight

Carlos Salaff’s father is a professional violinist, and Carlos spent a lot of time on planes with him as he toured the world. Those flights wound up being, as the common idiom goes, “music to his ears.”

“I became fascinated with the marvel of flight—the mechanics of it, the miracle of lifting off and landing in a completely different part of the world just hours later,” recalls the 47-year-old New York State native. “That sense of wonder never left me.”

That same wonderment of flight has enveloped the 59-year-old Pete Bitar since his childhood. “I’ve been a pilot for more than 40 years,” relates the Indiana resident. “I’ve flown everything from fixed wings to helicopters to personal wearable aircraft, probably about 30 different designs. I’ve loved every minute of it.”

So, it seemed like the proverbial match made in heaven, or at least the skies, when Carlos and Pete met a few years ago during the GoFly Prize, the multi-stage, multi-million-dollar global challenge to create personal flyers. They quickly realized they shared an intense passion for aviation, air technology, and aerospace design.

Taking that fervor and blending it with their mutual entrepreneurial instincts and acumen for engineering innovation, Carlos and Pete are partnering on LEO Flight, a team competing in GoAERO, the successor to GoFly that is also a multi-stage, multi-million-dollar global challenge but with a laser-focused humanitarian mission:  creating an entirely new classification of emergency response vehicles. These will be flyers that are more effective, efficient, and accessible than helicopters, drones, and ambulances during extreme weather catastrophes, man-made and natural disasters, and medical emergencies when every second counts.  

“When I was in high school, my brother and I went skateboarding one day on a really steep hill,” Carlos remembers. “He fell off and cracked his head and had to be rushed to the hospital. Time was of the essence, so much so that a medical specialist had to be flown in by helicopter to treat him. We were fortunate that this time everything worked out.”

But he quickly adds that there are many situations when it doesn’t, when helicopters can’t respond in time or can’t land because of weather or terrain conditions. 

This is where GoAERO is poised to be the solution, Carlos explains. It provides a “rare platform to apply bold design to a mission that really matters. It’s exciting to bring our work into a space where innovation meets impact, and where emergency response is a lens for exploring new modes of flight. So, it is gratifying to me to be part of this, to be part of something that could make a significant contribution to both aviation and humanity.”

Pete echoes these sentiments. He had participated in GoFly, making it to the Final Fly-Off with his vehicle. While he drew satisfaction from that achievement, he says he always felt there was a more far-reaching end goal, not just for his flyer but for the entire category of VTOL flyers.

“Deep down, I was always thinking that a flying car could have multiple uses beyond just shuttling people from one location to another,” he says. “Emergency response, search and rescue, even hostage rescue, and more. Flood zones, massive wildfires, hurricanes, and other situations where there is a desperate need to get people out of harm’s way as rapidly as possible. Things that helicopters can’t always do for various reasons. We believe our GoAERO vehicle will be able to do these things, that our technology will win the day.”

Their LEO Flight’s LX-1R Flyer is a compact, efficient, and electric-jet-powered VTOL (vertical take-off and landing) vehicle with the goal of fitting into tight spaces where helicopters can’t go. It is designed with 36 engines divided into four quadrants, each quadrant operating as a single engine. At the center will be space for either a pilot or a payload. It will be equipped with state-of-the-art LIDAR, light detection and ranging remote sensing technology for collision avoidance; a fiber-optic control system so it can fly underground, in a cave, if necessary, and an encoded GPS system to prevent hacking or other interference, among other interesting features. 

“It will have a lot of thrust because of the engine composition, but with a very small footprint and lots of redundancy for safety,” Pete points out. “It will be able to launch from anywhere, even a small boat.” 

That their LEO Flight LX-1R Flyer will be equipped with the latest technology and bells and whistles is not surprising, considering the professional backgrounds of both teammates.

Carlos has extensive experience in automotive design. After internships at Mazda and BMW and graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, he began his career at Mazda’s North American Design Studio, where he took part in designing several influential concept cars, including the widely popular Mazda 3 and MX-5. After a decade designing mass-produced cars, he founded SALAFF Automotive, a New York City-based company creating a collection of hand-built, art collection-worthy hypercars.

“Beyond aviation and automotive,” Carlos says, “I’ve drawn inspiration from architects and designers like Zaha Hadid, Eero Saarinen, and Pierre Cardin—visionaries who didn’t just design objects, but reimagined the world we live in.”

Pete is the holder of 18 patents, with several pending, in fields ranging from electrical and laser weapon systems to aviation and renewable energy. He is currently the owner of AirBuoyant, LLC and Electric Jet Aircraft and, with Carlos, is the co-founder of LEO Flight Corporation. He also owns a small airport in Pendleton, Indiana, called “Bitar Field,” where he runs operations and a drone flight school. 

“I’ve been designing and flying electric jets for nearly 10 years,” Pete says. “And Carlos and I just flew a full-scale prototype eVTOL, both unmanned and manned. Of course, for GoAERO, we will be making modifications to fulfill the Final Fly-Off requirements.”

Despite their vast experience and expertise, they acknowledge there are still challenges to overcome. They cite balancing innovation with manufacturability as one. They’re also working on what they describe as a radical form of propulsion in a compact form factor, and must make sure it’s not just visionary, but buildable and testable. That said, they say that their tenacious and bold team at LEO Flight has already solved some of the most difficult hurdles in getting there and are picking up speed.

Interestingly, when Pete and Carlos first started building flying vehicles, emergency rescue wasn’t specifically on their minds. But they both point out that they always saw aviation as a way to create a better world.  

“The heart of it, for me, is about improving life on Earth – rethinking the ground as a more human-centric place, less dominated by traffic and pollution,” Carlos stresses. “But it’s also about expanding the boundaries of human life and experience—into the sky, and eventually into space.”

So, while they hope their LEO Flight LX-1R Flyer will revolutionize emergency response, more broadly, it’s about restoring time and access to people. Indeed, Carlos sees it as a way to “make cities more humane, to reduce dependency on cars, and to bring aviation closer to everyday life.”

And Pete adds, “We’re building our LX-1R Flyer not just for this competition, but as part of a long-term vision to create a safer, more connected future.”