An airplane just landed on a helipad in Lower Manhattan.

The helipad measured just 62 feet by 62 feet.

It sits on the East River, surrounded by the Manhattan skyline with the Brooklyn Bridge nearby.

More importantly, it was built for helicopters – not airplanes.

Yet a company named Electra managed to land a fixed-wing airplane there and then take off from the same confined space.

Electra believes it's the first time a fixed-wing aircraft without vertical takeoff capability has ever landed on the helipad…

But it certainly won’t be the last.

And what happened in Manhattan this week perfectly illustrates why I’m suddenly very interested in one of the most beaten-down corners of the stock market.

How Did Electra Pull This Off?

The secret is something called “blown lift.”

Electra’s aircraft uses electric motors and propellers to push air over the wings, allowing it to generate enough lift to fly at extremely low speeds.

The company says its Ultra Short technology will eventually allow passenger-carrying aircraft to take off and land in just 150 feet.

This essentially solves the biggest obstacle to making short-distance air travel practical: infrastructure.

Traditional airplanes need airports and long runways.

If you can build aircraft that operate from tiny landing areas closer to where people actually live and work, suddenly a lot more routes become practical.

Electra calls this idea “Direct Aviation.”

Instead of:

Home → Airport → Airplane → Airport → Destination

You get:

Home → Airplane → Destination

The company estimates this could shave 3 hours and 45 minutes off trips from New York City to Boston, 3 hours and 30 minutes from New York City to Washington, D.C., and 45 minutes from New York City to Philadelphia.

Electra Isn’t Alone Building “Flying Cars”

Electra (a private company) is taking one approach to solving the runway problem.

Other companies are eliminating the runway altogether.

Joby Aviation (JOBY), Archer Aviation (ACHR), and Eve Holdings (EVEX) are developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, better known as eVTOLs.

These aircraft take off vertically like helicopters before transitioning to forward flight.

And they're even closer to carrying actual passengers.

• Joby is working through the fifth and final stage of FAA type certification and now has five aircraft flying with another 12 in production.

• Archer has been flying its Midnight aircraft across California and is preparing for early commercial operations.

• Eve, which is backed by aircraft giant Embraer, recently completed an important transition-flight milestone with its full-scale prototype.

All three companies are flying real aircraft and steadily moving toward certification and commercial service.

Yet something very different is happening to their stocks…

• JOBY has fallen 68% over the last year.

• ACHR is down 61%.

• EVEX is down 63%.

Investors have almost completely lost interest in flying cars at the exact moment the technology is becoming reality.

And that's exactly why I'm interested in buying them.

There Are Two Ways to Win

Long term, I think flying cars will become a real business.

I'm not saying we're all going to have an aircraft parked in our driveways.

The much more realistic opportunity is replacing some of the most inconvenient trips we already make.

A 90-minute drive through traffic to an airport could become a 15-minute flight. A three-hour trip between nearby cities could potentially be cut in half.

That's a service people will pay for.

But here's the important part for us as investors:

We don't need to wait for flying cars to become a part of our day-to-day lives to make money on these stocks.

We just need people to start paying attention again.

Right now, expectations are incredibly low. JOBY, ACHR and EVEX have all fallen more than 60% over the past year, and flying cars have largely disappeared from the investing conversation.

Meanwhile, the companies themselves are getting closer to the milestones that could bring that attention back.

• FAA certification.

• The first commercial routes.

• The first paying passengers.

News on any one of these milestones could quickly change the story around these stocks.

We've seen this happen countless times with emerging technologies.

Investors get excited too early → the technology takes longer than expected → the stocks collapse as everyone moves on.

But eventually the technology catches up with the hype.

I think we're getting closer to that point with flying cars.

Electra landing an airplane on a 62-by-62-foot helipad in Manhattan is another reminder of how quickly this technology is advancing.

The time to buy is now, while nobody cares.