VIDEO: Elroy Air Makes First A to B Cargo Delivery With Its Hybrid-Electric VTOL Aircraft Chaparral

Elroy Air has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its first point A to point B car­go deliv­ery using the first-of-its-kind drone, Chap­ar­ral.

Chap­ar­ral is an advanced VTOL air­craft built to car­ry up to 300 pounds of car­go across 300 miles with­out a crew onboard. lt was engi­neered with a hybrid-elec­tric pow­er­train to meet the needs of our com­mer­cial and defense cus­tomers, with high util­i­sa­tion, no charg­ing infra­struc­ture required and increased range.

Dur­ing the his­toric mile­stone flight on Decem­ber 10th, the hybrid-elec­tric VTOL drone autonomous­ly car­ried 213 lbs over a flight dis­tance of 2.6 miles in Byron, Cal­i­for­nia.

The air­craft took off ver­ti­cal­ly, accel­er­at­ed to a speed of approx­i­mate­ly 60 mph and then per­formed a ver­ti­cal land­ing at a sec­ond loca­tion half a mile away, where Chap­ar­ral deliv­ered lunch to the Elroy Air team to cel­e­brate the mile­stone.

Elroy Air CEO Andrew Clare, Ph.D, said: “This deliv­ery is the real­iza­tion of the val­ue of the Chap­ar­ral, an autonomous, hybrid-elec­tric drone capa­ble of deliv­er­ing hun­dreds of pounds of car­go with­out the need for run­ways or infra­struc­ture. We thought about what the first deliv­ery should be and decid­ed to deliv­er lunch to the team who has worked tire­less­ly to make this vision a real­i­ty.

“As we move into 2026 hav­ing com­plet­ed these crit­i­cal mile­stones and now focused on scal­ing pro­duc­tion with Kratos, Chap­ar­ral is ready to go to work to unlock unprece­dent­ed oper­a­tional capac­i­ty for our com­mer­cial and defense cus­tomers.”

Designed with speed, safe­ty, and oper­a­tional effi­cien­cy in mind, Chap­ar­ral enables next-gen­er­a­tion logis­tics at a frac­tion of the cap­i­tal and oper­a­tional costs of tra­di­tion­al pilot­ed heli­copters.

The deliv­ery was con­duct­ed with the company’s Hatch Load Pod. The pod is a rear-access car­go mod­ule designed for rapid ground oper­a­tions, enabling stream­lined work­flows, and min­i­mal ground han­dling require­ments.

This pod is one of the many pay­load designs to enable mul­ti-mis­sion oper­a­tions. Oth­ers include the Express Pod, Heavy Pay­load Pod, Pel­i­can Case, Intel­li­gence, Sur­veil­lance, and Recon­nais­sance (ISR) Pod, Cli­mate-Con­trol Pod, and Air Drop Pod.

The announce­ment comes after an event­ful year for the com­pa­ny, which this sum­mer began longer range flights, includ­ing mul­ti­ple 25-mile flights in Sep­tem­ber, and the com­pa­ny also recent­ly announced Kratos Defense & Secu­ri­ty Solu­tions as its exclu­sive U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ing part­ner for the Chap­ar­ral in a strate­gic man­u­fac­tur­ing agree­ment to accel­er­ate high-vol­ume pro­duc­tion.

Dave Mer­rill, Founder and Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Elroy Air, said: “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.

“It is great to see Chap­ar­ral fly­ing fur­ther, faster, with heav­ier pay­loads and now mak­ing deliv­er­ies week after week, but what’s most excit­ing is see­ing Chap­ar­ral ris­ing to the occa­sion to meet the unique and expand­ing oper­a­tional needs of our cus­tomers.”

From tac­ti­cal resup­ply to human­i­tar­i­an aid, Chap­ar­ral enables rapid aer­i­al car­go deliv­ery while keep­ing per­son­nel out of harm’s way. Its autonomous oper­a­tions enhance mis­sion resilience by ensur­ing crit­i­cal car­go reach­es the point of need safe­ly, secure­ly and reli­ably.