MightyFly Unveils Second-Gen Cargo Drone, up to 600 Miles of Same-Day, Door-to-Door Delivery

MightyFly, a U.S based car­go drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny found­ed in 2019, announced today it has received an FAA Cer­tifi­cate of Autho­ri­sa­tion, reports a press release. This allows tri­al­ing of its long-range, last-mile and mid­dle-mile car­go drone.

This sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion craft called Cen­to, took just 9 months from con­cept to first flight, assist­ed by a USD5.1 mil­lion seed fund­ing. The FAA cer­tifi­cate allows tri­als for up to a 600 mile range car­ry­ing 100 lbs of car­go. MightyFly will be able to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of its autonomous air­craft, with a larg­er air­space (230 sq miles) in which to test the tran­si­tion from hov­er to for­ward flight at medi­um and high alti­tudes (up to 5000 feet). 

The release states, “The Cen­to, pre­vi­ous­ly referred to as the MF-100, is a hybrid, elec­tric Ver­ti­cal Take­off and Land­ing (VTOL) air­craft with a car­go capac­i­ty of 100 lbs, a range of 600 miles, and a max speed of 150 mph.”

It con­tin­ues, “With eight elec­tric ver­ti­cal lift fans, one for­ward propul­sion pro­peller, and a high wing car­bon fibre air­frame, the ful­ly loaded Cen­to weighs just 355 pounds.

“It mea­sures 13.1 ft by 16.7 ft tak­ing up a total area less than two com­pact cars. This means the ground trans­fer sta­tions required onsite can sim­ply be two car spots in an exist­ing park­ing lot.” 

Man­al Habib

Cen­to is equipped with a 6 ft by 1 ft by 1 ft inter­nal car­go bay able to car­ry 96 small USPS pack­ages. Car­go is loaded and unloaded by a con­vey­or belt that oper­ates autonomous­ly, which allows no human han­dling required apart from the drop-off and pick­up points at the ground hubs.

As Cen­to is equipped with a hybrid pow­er­train, it does not require recharg­ing between flights. An inter­nal com­bus­tion engine recharges the aircraft’s bat­tery while in the air lead­ing to a poten­tial 600 mile range, enabling it to per­form mul­ti­ple con­sec­u­tive deliv­er­ies.

Man­al Habib, MightyFly CEO and co-Founder, com­ment­ed, “The tra­di­tion­al hub-and-spoke dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el can still serve busi­ness­es that have cen­tralised ware­hous­ing and ship­ping sys­tems in place and that have expe­ri­enced few logis­tics issues.”

She con­tin­ued, “But if there is one les­son we’ve learned from sup­ply chain bot­tle­necks and logis­tics over the past few years, it’s that we need flex­i­bil­i­ty – to be able to adapt to var­i­ous car­go vol­umes and expe­dit­ed tim­ing or urgen­cies. Med­ical com­pa­nies, just-in-time man­u­fac­tur­ing, and the 51 per­cent of all retail­ers that now pro­vide same-day deliv­ery need a faster and more afford­able way to get their goods and per­ish­ables to the final des­ti­na­tion.”

MightyFly’s Cen­to is ide­al­ly suit­ed for retail, med­ical, auto­mo­tive and man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness­es, but it has also attract­ed gov­ern­ment-lev­el inter­est, specif­i­cal­ly in defence, from the Unit­ed States Air Force (USAF). The USAF has recog­nised the agili­ty of MightyFly’s per­for­mance and is sup­port­ing fur­ther devel­op­ment of its tech­nol­o­gy.

Mean­while, the com­pa­ny is aim­ing to devel­op a larg­er craft that can car­ry 500 lbs of car­go. MightyFly was named a ‘Top Sup­ply Chain Start­up to Watch’ in 2022 by Busi­ness Insid­er.

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(Images: MightyFly)