An autonomous, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft designed to carry up to 300 pounds of payload over 300 miles this month completed its first point-to-point flight.
The maiden A-to-B flight of Elroy Air’s C-1—a full-scale prototype of its Chaparral cargo drone—took place on December 10 at the company’s facility in Byron, California, and carried 213 pounds, including lunch for the Elroy team. The uncrewed aircraft reached about 60 mph and covered 2.6 miles, completing a vertical takeoff and landing.
The flight utilized Elroy’s Hatch Load pod, which remains attached to Chaparral for rapid order loading. The company also produces pods for express delivery of small items, heavy payloads, humanitarian air drops, and climate-controlled or sensitive cargo, such as blood and other medical equipment. It even has a pod designed for military intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR).
Elroy CEO Andrew Clare in August told FLYING that the company has a backlog of about 1,500 preorders, with customers including FedEx, Bristow Group, and Lease Corporation International (LCI). Chaparral has also generated interest from the U.S. military, which is studying its potential for defense applications.
“One of the remarkable outcomes of working closely with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Marine Corps and allied forces, as well as logistics titans like FedEx and Bristow Group throughout the development of Chaparral, is that we’ve been able to develop Chaparral to be a modular platform capable of flexing with the countless missions and operations our partners can imagine,” said Dave Merrill, founder and executive chairman of Elroy.
Pilot hiring tanked among major carriers in 2024, opening the door for autonomous aircraft to fill the gap.
In 2023, however, FedEx Express told its pilots it was “significantly overstaffed” and suggested they join an American Airlines affiliate. In October, the company’s pilot union—representing more than 5,000 personnel— issued a vote of no confidence in CEO Rajesh Subramanian, citing a shift in approach from people-first to profit-first.
Expanding the Autonomous Envelope
Elroy’s Chaparral is a hybrid-electric, VTOL cargo aircraft designed for runway-independent commercial and military logistics missions at a lower operating cost than helicopters. Potential use cases include middle-mile cargo delivery, military resupply, disaster response, and humanitarian aid.
Chaparral’s hybrid-electric powertrain feeds eight vertical and four forward propellers, with a turbogenerator that recharges its batteries during flight. It operated fully uncrewed both in the air and on the ground, capable of autonomously picking up and depositing payloads stored in Elroy’s array of cargo pods.
Working with manufacturer Kratos—which specializes in jet-powered, composite uncrewed aircraft such as the XQ-58 Valkyrie—Elroy aims to build its first production-intent Chaparral in 2026 before ramping up to hundreds of aircraft per year.
The company’s Chaparral C-1 prototype made its first flight in 2023, and Elroy has since been expanding the envelope.
Last year, for example, the C-1 took part in U.S. Marine Corps demonstrations at the Yuma Proving Ground at Laguna Army Air Field (KLGF) in Arizona. Elroy has active contracts with the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Japan Ground Self-Defense Force (JGSDF) and is seeking military airworthiness approval to ramp up those demonstrations.
Another key milestone for the C-1 was its first transitions from vertical hover to forward flight, achieved in July and August. That was followed in September by a 25-mile transition flight and demonstrations with the JGSDF, Clare told FLYING in September.
Earlier this year, Elroy personnel visited Bristow’s Houma-Terrebonne Airport (KHUM) hub in Louisiana, the site of a planned commercial deployment. The company also hopes to participate in the eVTOL and Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Integration Pilot Program (eIPP)—a three-year campaign during which the FAA will ease restrictions on precertification aircraft to study their real-world operations.
“I’m very excited about that program,” Clare said. “We’ve been in active discussions with our locality and the FAA for quite some time about it and are looking forward to releasing more about that in the future.”
On Wednesday, U.S. federal agency heads threw their support behind the AAM National Strategy—a whole-of-government blueprint designed to cement American leadership in autonomous and VTOL aircraft such as Chaparral.
