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Elroy Air presents its pre-production Chaparral VTOL aerial cargo system and confirms deal with Mesa Airlines for up to 100 aircraft

Elroy Air has unveiled its pre-pro­duc­tion Chap­ar­ral air­craft, the first end-to-end autonomous ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing aer­i­al car­go sys­tem.

The Chap­ar­ral can autonomous­ly pick up 300–500 lbs of car­go and deliv­er it by air up to 300 miles, a capa­bil­i­ty that push­es beyond the lim­it­ed pay­load capa­bil­i­ties of deliv­ery drones and the air­port infra­struc­ture required of pilot­ed air car­go options avail­able today.

An ear­ly pro­to­type was flown in 2019, demon­strat­ing sev­er­al key sys­tems of the air­craft design. The Chap­ar­ral sys­tem fea­tures eight ver­ti­cal lift fans, four dis­trib­uted elec­tric propul­sors for for­ward flight, a high-wing air­frame con­fig­u­ra­tion, as well as improved ground auton­o­my and car­go-han­dling sys­tems.

It is a tran­si­tion­ing “lift + cruise” VTOL air­craft with a full car­bon com­pos­ite air­frame, and a tur­bine-based hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train for long-range mis­sion capa­bil­i­ties. It was also designed to fit in a 40’ ship­ping con­tain­er or C‑130 car­go air­craft, enabling it to be quick­ly shipped and deployed any­where in the world.

Elroy Air Co-founder and CEO David Mer­rill, said: “Today, we are proud to unveil the Chap­ar­ral, a first-of-kind autonomous air car­go sys­tem that builds on the more than 100 years of Amer­i­can avi­a­tion and air­craft devel­op­ment his­to­ry. The Chap­ar­ral is an impor­tant part of the future of express logis­tics.

“It is built for full end-to-end automa­tion, and it will safe­ly and effi­cient­ly make express ship­ping pos­si­ble in thou­sands of new places. It’s a deliv­ery drone that’s faster than ground trans­port and low­er cost than today’s tra­di­tion­al air­craft.”

Elroy Air was award­ed a Tac­ti­cal Fund­ing Increase (TACFI) Award from the Unit­ed States Air Force in Q4 2021 amount­ing to a fur­ther $1.7 mil­lion in con­tract val­ue along­side its exist­ing Phase 3 SBIR con­tract.

The fund­ing will be used to fur­ther devel­op deploy­ment details and CONOPS in col­lab­o­ra­tion with its Air Force and Agili­ty Prime part­ners. It reflects sus­tained enthu­si­asm by the Air Force and AFWERX to help accel­er­ate the Chap­ar­ral to readi­ness for usage by the organ­i­sa­tion.

Colonel Nathan Diller, Direc­tor of AFWERX, said: “Agili­ty Prime sees val­ue in elec­tric ver­ti­cal take­off and land­ing vehi­cles as well as hybridiza­tion that cap­tures the ben­e­fits of elec­tric along with the oppor­tu­ni­ty for greater range.

“The Air Force has also active­ly explored dif­fer­ent approach­es to mod­u­lar­i­ty, dif­fer­ent pay­loads and ulti­mate­ly a way to reduce the num­ber of humans nec­es­sary for logis­ti­cal touch points. It is excit­ing to work with part­ners who are pas­sion­ate about build­ing this new era of aero­space.”

Elroy Air has already secured agree­ments for more than 500 air­craft from com­mer­cial, defence and human­i­tar­i­an cus­tomers — amount­ing to more than $1 bil­lion.

Mesa Air­lines, an Amer­i­can region­al air­line oper­at­ing large fleets on behalf of part­ners includ­ing Amer­i­can Air­lines, Unit­ed Air­lines, and DHL, has an intent to order 150 air­craft to serve the express par­cel and health­care sec­tors.

Whi­ile AYR Logis­tics, an air­craft own­er and oper­a­tor with over 20 years of expe­ri­ence pro­vid­ing logis­tics sup­port to the human­i­tar­i­an com­mu­ni­ty in over 45 coun­tries, includ­ing the Unit­ed Nations, World Food Pro­gramme (WFP), Gov­ern­ments and NGOs, also signed an agree­ment with Elroy Air to pur­chase up to 100 Chap­ar­ral air­craft.

Jonathan Orn­stein, Chair­man and Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer of Mesa Air­lines, said: “We’ve always been at the fore­front of avi­a­tion tech­nol­o­gy and we’re proud to be at the cut­ting-edge of this next chap­ter in part­ner­ship with Elroy Air.

“We are increas­ing­ly see­ing the demand for same and next-day deliv­ery, but so many rur­al com­mu­ni­ties have been cut off from the nation­al trans­porta­tion sys­tem. Pilot short­ages and envi­ron­men­tal reg­u­la­tions make this even more chal­leng­ing. With the Chap­ar­ral, we’re excit­ed to be able to pro­vide autonomous car­go deliv­ery to help recon­nect those com­mu­ni­ties.”

Stephen Lyons, Chief Devel­op­ment Offi­cer of AYR Logis­tics, added: “What aid agen­cies spend on trans­porta­tion is mon­ey that they’re not spend­ing on food, med­i­cine and oth­er emer­gency sup­plies, but trans­porta­tion is obvi­ous­ly very impor­tant to get the aid to where it needs to be.

“There sim­ply has­n’t been a UAV with the type of capa­bil­i­ties that the Chap­ar­ral has in the com­mer­cial mar­kets. The Chap­ar­ral is a quan­tum leap in terms of load car­ry­ing and range as well as being able to oper­ate with min­i­mal infra­struc­ture.”

Elroy Air has also devel­oped light­weight, aero­dy­nam­ic mod­u­lar car­go pods that can be pre-loaded by ground per­son­nel and picked up by the air­craft before take­off.

At the deliv­ery loca­tion, the car­go pod is low­ered to the ground and released after the sys­tem has land­ed. The Chap­ar­ral sys­tem can retrieve anoth­er pre-packed pod and trans­port the pod to its next des­ti­na­tion, cre­at­ing a bi-direc­tion­al con­vey­or belt through the sky.

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Jason Pritchard

Jason Pritchard is the Editor of eVTOL Insights. He holds a BA from Leicester's De Montfort University and has worked in Journalism and Public Relations for more than a decade. Outside of work, Jason enjoys playing and watching football and golf. He also has a keen interest in Ancient Egypt.

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