ROBBRIEF
Chaparral, Elroy Air's 500 pound, 450 mile hybrid electric cargo drone, completed a week of pilotless flights at a Louisiana helicopter hub under an FAA integration pilot program.
Elroy Air's Chaparral, a hybrid-electric vertical-takeoff aircraft built to carry more than 500 pounds of cargo up to 450 miles without a runway, completed a week of fully autonomous, uncrewed flights at Houma-Terrebonne Airport in Louisiana in late August, the company said Tuesday.
The campaign ran under the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), a federal program formally established in September 2025 to collect operational data from autonomous aircraft before the agency writes rules for routine pilotless operations in the National Airspace System. Created under President Trump's "Unleashing American Drone Dominance" executive order, the program pairs developers with state and local agencies to test autonomous flight under live air-traffic-control oversight. Each Chaparral sortie flew with no pilot on board.
Houma-Terrebonne is one of the country's busiest helicopter hubs, serving offshore oil and gas operations in the Gulf. Flights ran in partnership with LIFTOff Louisiana and Bristow Group. Cargo on the test runs included medical supplies, spare parts, food, toolboxes, and emergency water containers.
"Our mission is moving heavy cargo autonomously, safely, and at scale," CEO Dr. Andrew Clare said, with coordination continuing with FAA and state officials on a future commercial autonomous cargo framework.
The flight data feeds directly into the rulemaking pipeline. The FAA has not yet said when it will use this campaign to publish a proposed framework for routine pilotless heavy-cargo operations.