MightyFly Receives “First FAA Flight Corridor Approval for Large Autonomous Cargo eVTOL”

MightyFly announced this week it has become the first large autonomous car­go eVTOL com­pa­ny to receive an FAA flight cor­ri­dor approval in the U.S, reports a press release. The com­pa­ny began flight test­ing its Cen­to air­craft in March in prepa­ra­tion for the flight cor­ri­dor. It is mak­ing rapid progress with the pro­gram.

The release explains, “The FAA approval was con­firmed via a Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion Act inquiry in late March based on cer­ti­fi­ca­tion on Jan­u­ary 25th and includes the Cer­tifi­cate of Waiv­er or Autho­ri­sa­tion (COA) for a flight cor­ri­dor of up to 5,000 ft in alti­tude between the New Jerusalem and Byron Air­ports in Cal­i­for­nia and a Spe­cial Air­wor­thi­ness Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion (SAC) enabling the com­pa­ny to test Beyond Visu­al Line of Site (BVLOS) capa­bil­i­ties while using a chase air­plane.”

This flight cor­ri­dor unlocks the poten­tial for MightyFly to advance its flight test­ing capa­bil­i­ties; per­form autonomous A‑to‑B flights with­in the gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­space; tri­al the air­craft; test long-range Com­mand and Con­trol (C2) datalink com­mu­ni­ca­tion; and tri­al future Detect and Avoid sys­tem for Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights. 

MightyFly’s SAC mar­ket sur­vey autho­ri­sa­tion allows the com­pa­ny to begin demon­strat­ing point-to-point autonomous deliv­ery flights and car­ry out proof of con­cept (POC) pro­grams with cus­tomers and part­ners. “This COA,” explains the release, “is a key enabler for MightyFly to posi­tion itself as a B2B expe­dit­ed logis­tics indus­try dis­rup­tor.”

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Man­al Habib, CEO of MightyFly, enthused, “This is a sol­id vote of con­fi­dence from the FAA in our work and our abil­i­ty to per­form safe autonomous flights in the gen­er­al avi­a­tion air­space. We now look for­ward to demon­strat­ing point-to-point deliv­ery flights with our part­ners in this space.”

The release con­tin­ues, “This indus­try mile­stone was pos­si­ble due to the matu­ri­ty of MightyFly’s air­craft, the exper­tise of the team both in autonomous air­craft devel­op­ment and avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tion, and the company’s rela­tion­ship with the FAA. MightyFly is first to receive this reg­u­la­to­ry approval while being in its seed-fund stage, as com­pared to more high­ly fund­ed autonomous car­go eVTOL com­pa­nies with more than 10X the cap­i­tal.”  

On March 4th, MightyFly start­ed fly­ing its third-gen­er­a­tion Cen­to autonomous car­go air­craft. To date, it has com­plet­ed over 30 autonomous flights in a span of just a few weeks.

The test cam­paign is to incor­po­rate A‑to‑B flights and show­case autonomous deliv­er­ies of var­i­ous use cas­es. These include med­ical and phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal sup­plies, spare parts and man­u­fac­tur­ing com­po­nents, as well as fast-mov­ing con­sumer goods.

The flight cor­ri­dor enables MightyFly to pre­pare for two major upcom­ing pub­lic flight debuts. Under a con­tract with the Michi­gan Office of Future Mobil­i­ty and Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, MightyFly is to pub­licly demon­strate point-to-point autonomous car­go deliv­ery flights to part­ners and poten­tial cus­tomers in Michi­gan.

Man­al Habib

The com­pa­ny is also plan­ning to demon­strate flights to the USAF show­cas­ing its autonomous load­ing, unload­ing and bal­anc­ing of pack­ages capa­bil­i­ties.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://mightyfly.com/

(Images: MightyFly)

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