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Cessna SkyCourier UX: the cargo plane that deletes the cockpit
TransportationGet your news fromINTERESTING ENGINEERINGTextron Aviation and the autonomy company Merlin have unveiled the Cessna SkyCourier UX, a concept freighter that removes the cockpit entirely and flies itself, hauling about 6,000 pounds or three LD3 containers into rough frontline airstrips.
A cargo plane with no cockpit at all, flying nearly three tonnes of supplies into places where nobody wants to risk a crew.
This is the Cessna SkyCourier UX, a concept that Textron Aviation and the autonomy company Merlin showed off on the 14th of September at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference outside Washington.
Start with the aircraft underneath. The SkyCourier is a twin turboprop FedEx helped design, certified by the FAA in 2022, and FedEx ordered fifty with options for fifty more.
Two Pratt and Whitney PT6 engines, a cruise above 200 knots, roughly 900 nautical miles of range, and a hold that takes 6,000 pounds of freight or three LD3 containers.
The UX version takes the pilots out. With no flight deck, the nose becomes a big loading opening, cargo pushes forward into the space the cockpit used to fill, and the aircraft can kneel to load on a bare strip.
Doing the flying is Merlin’s software, the Merlin Pilot. It has already logged hundreds of autonomous flights on Cessna Caravans and King Airs, and holds a 105 million dollar contract ceiling with US Special Operations Command to automate the C-130J.
The real pitch is the gap in the middle. Small delivery drones carry a few kilos. A C-130 needs a crew and a proper runway. Island hopping resupply in the Pacific sits awkwardly between the two.
The catch is that this is still only a concept. No flight test date, no production timeline, and no settled rulebook yet for certifying an aeroplane with nobody on board.
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