Munson Healthcare starts the second phase of its medical drone delivery trial on Tuesday, October 6, flying between Munson Medical Center in Traverse City and the Crystal Lake Health Center in Frankfort, Michigan, through October 30. Traverse Connect, which runs the state-funded project, announced the dates in a release emailed Monday morning. The flights will simulate deliveries of supplies, laboratory samples and medications between the two Munson facilities.

The first phase, in May 2025, never flew more than about 1.4 miles (2.2 kilometers) from the hospital. Frankfort sits about 30 miles (49 kilometers) west of it by air, on Lake Michigan. Warren Call, Traverse Connect’s president and CEO, says in the release that this phase runs “multiple drones and sensor technology, with approval from the Federal Aviation Administration.” The release does not say which approval, or name the aircraft.

Phase two was supposed to fly in May. As DroneXL reported on May 22, the plan then was a 2026 move into beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations with DroneUp as the licensed operator. By June 3, DroneUp had left the project.

DroneUp Walked Away in Spring, and Blueflite Took Over the FAA Paperwork

DroneUp, the Virginia operator that ran phase one’s flights, winch deliveries and ground infrastructure, exited the Munson project before the May 2026 flights, Michigan public radio station WCMU reported on June 3. Blueflite, the aircraft maker, assumed the operator role and the FAA approvals DroneUp was to secure.

Greg James, DroneUp’s vice president of business development, told WCMU the company was refocusing on “scalable platform, autonomy, and airspace-management capabilities” and that the exit reflected “current market timing and delivery economics at scale.” Tracy Cleveland, Munson’s vice president of supply chain, said DroneUp was leaving the space as a business and that Munson would work with blueflite for the immediate future.

Blueflite’s chief technology officer James McClearen told the station the company now handles the regulatory requirements that DroneUp was going to do. That is a different job from building the aircraft. Blueflite’s Cobalt 461 went onto the FAA’s Section 44807 approved list on June 1, and it holds a Department of War conditional approval exempting it from the FCC Covered List, as DroneXL reported in August when the same aircraft began flying auto parts for a Ford dealer group in metro Detroit. In June, WCMU reported testing would restart near the end of summer. It is starting on October 6.

Phase One Flew 67 Times Inside One Mile and Lost Six Flights to Hardware

The first phase ran from May 9 to 20, 2025, within one mile (1.6 kilometers) of Munson Medical Center and completed 61 of 67 flights, a 91% success rate. Three failures were winch problems. One was a GPS fault, two were lost cellular links that triggered automatic return to launch.

Those figures come from the project report Traverse Connect published in December 2025. Fifty-five of the 67 flights ran the shortest route, roughly 1,000 meters (0.6 miles) to the Munson Dialysis Center on West Royal Drive. The longest, to Copper Ridge Surgery Center in Garfield Township, was about 2,200 meters (1.4 miles). Every flight was under Part 107 with the pilot watching the aircraft and three to four visual observers covering ground and air risk, and the report’s stated purpose for that constraint was to gather data for later BVLOS operations under Part 135.

The flights started with water bottles and temperature loggers standing in for specimens, then carried real patient laboratory samples once the handling checked out. Munson staff drive more than 90,000 miles (145,000 kilometers) a year moving samples and supplies between the system’s facilities, which span 29 counties, and that mileage is the number the project exists to cut.

The state has put about $1.64 million into the project through the Advanced Aerial Mobility Activation Fund, an initial $689,500 and a further $950,000 announced in May 2025. The fund is run by the Michigan Department of Transportation, the Office of Future Mobility and Electrification and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Newlab provided additional support, per the release. Central Michigan University’s Rural Health Excellence Institute is the evaluation partner.

Cleveland said in Monday’s release that expanding to “multiple drones to multiple Munson Healthcare sites” is another step toward operationalizing the service for the region. Call said the data would “inform best practices for statewide and national adoption.”

DroneXL’s Take

A twentyfold jump in range is the story here, and the operator swap is why it took five extra months. DroneUp was the party with the FAA relationship, the winch system and the ground stations in phase one. Its exit left a Michigan aircraft maker to become an air carrier on top of being a manufacturer, and the release’s silence on which FAA approval covers a 30-mile hospital run is the loose end I want closed before anyone calls this phase a success. A Section 44807 listing says the FAA has looked at the Cobalt 461, and nothing more. It says nothing about who is allowed to fly it beyond the pilot’s eyes over Benzie County.

Phase one’s six failures were three winch faults, a GPS receiver and two dropped cell links across routes under a mile and a half. Over 30 miles of lake-effect weather in late October, the cell-link failure mode is the one to watch, because an automatic return to launch from 25 miles out is a long flight home with somebody’s lab sample on board. If the project publishes a phase two report as candid as the December one, with the FAA authorization named and the abort causes listed, Munson will have done more for rural medical drone delivery in the US than any press release could.

Sources: Traverse Connect and Munson Healthcare media release, October 5, 2026 (emailed to DroneXL), 9&10 News, WCMU, June 3, 2026, Traverse City Medical Drone Delivery Pilot Project Report, December 2025.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.