Joby Aviation’s autonomy-equipped Cessna Grand Caravan has finished a 3,199-mile trip from California to North Carolina’s Outer Banks without a single control input from the safety pilot on board, the company announced Friday. Joby billed the trip as the first autonomous flight across the U.S., though the single turboprop aircraft covered the distance in stages over eight days, with stops in Arizona, Texas, and South Carolina.
According to Joby, the J208—an experimental modified Cessna 208B Grand Caravan registered N101XW—taxied, took off, navigated, and landed on its own throughout the trip. Remote pilots at Joby’s facilities in California and at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina supervised the flights from as far as 2,323 miles away. Under the company’s supervised autonomy model, a ground-based remote pilot serves as pilot in command, updating flight plans and talking to air traffic control over the aircraft’s standard radios. A safety pilot rode along to monitor the flights.
The Caravan left Buchanan Field Airport (KCCR) in Concord, California, on September 8 and stopped the same day at Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT), one of the busiest general aviation airports in the country. It then flew to Perot Field Fort Worth Alliance Airport (KAFW) in Texas, where it sat on display as Joby kicked off a week of eVTOL air taxi demonstration flights under the FAA’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). At Shaw on September 14, the company demonstrated what it called representative military flight operations. Along the way, Joby said, the aircraft rerouted around thunderstorms in real time.
After a low pass near the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, the Caravan landed autonomously at Dare County Regional Airport (KMQI) in nearby Manteo on September 16. Flights in the state supported the North Carolina Department of Transportation’s eLIFT-NC initiative for healthcare logistics, while the western stops fed data to the Utah Department of Transportation–led uFLY coalition, which is evaluating high-altitude and desert operations for the FAA. Both uFly and eLIFT-NC are also leading eIPP projects.
Reaching Remote Communities
“Autonomy has an important role to play in the future of flight, allowing us to connect remote communities, deliver critical supplies, respond faster to disasters, support military operations, and keep pilots out of harm’s way,” said Joby founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt.
Joby acquired the autonomy technology when it bought Xwing’s autonomy division in 2024. The company credits the system with more than 400 flights and 800 automated flight hours, plus three U.S. military exercises. During two Air Force Agile Flag exercises in 2024, Joby said, the aircraft delivered replacement parts about 24 hours faster than conventional logistics would have. During the Resolute Force Pacific exercise in August 2025, crews in Guam operated it in Hawaii from more than 3,000 miles away.
The FAA has not certified Joby’s Superpilot system. Xwing opened a certification project with the agency in 2023 aimed at uncrewed commercial cargo flights. Joby has framed the tour as part of its work under the eIPP, for which the company is also flying its four-passenger JAS4-1 eVTOL air taxi.
The tour’s westbound leg starts September 23 in Raleigh, North Carolina, followed by stops in Stafford, Virginia, near Washington, D.C.; Louisville, Kentucky; Wichita, Kansas; and Oklahoma City. The aircraft is scheduled to reach Salt Lake City on September 30, then finish the tour in Portland, Oregon.
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