Inside the Approach

"3 Charlie Bravo, are you the autonomous Caravan?"

"Affirm."

That exchange, caught on the radio and now on video, is how the world found out. Merlin announced it successfully completed an autonomous landing at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh with its Cessna 208B Grand Caravan, equipped with the Merlin Pilot AI-powered autonomy platform. The autonomous landing occurred on Runway 27 at 10:02am CDT on July 17, 2026 at the 73rd annual event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where over 600,000 EAA members and aviation enthusiasts gather annually to celebrate the heritage and future of flight.

See It for yourself

The view from the cockpit

Jonathan Oliver, a Merlin Engineering Test Pilot, was in the cockpit for the flight, watching Merlin Pilot fly the approach into the runway. It also happened to be a fitting bookend to his own history with the show; Jonathan interned at EAA back in 2010, an experience he shared in an earlier post. “My first line in my logbook is OSH to ATW,” he says. “Our flight on Friday was ATW to OSH. Getting to come back and be part of this is such an awesome experience."  We caught up with him after the flight.

What was going through your mind as the aircraft made its final approach?

“One of the variables we were tracking was visibility due to the wildfire smoke drifting down from Canada that had been reducing visibility across the region all week. The Merlin Pilot will take us all the way to touchdown, you can see that in the video, but we still need clear visibility of the runway environment. I breathed a sigh of relief when the runway came into view at about 600 feet AGL, right where we expected it to.”

Did it feel like a historic moment in the cockpit, or more business as usual?

"Honestly, in the cockpit it felt more routine than historic, and that’s exactly the goal. We, the Merlin team, were of course excited because of the history of this place and this event and the extra procedures wrapped around the world's biggest aviation celebration, and I still smile every time I watch the footage of the landing. But at the end of the day, the Merlin Pilot landed it just like I would have, and that’s the real story. That's what we're doing, isn't it? We're building a pilot, just not a human one."

A big year, capped by one landing

Merlin's autonomous landing builds on a year of significant technical and corporate milestones for the company, including its public listing on NASDAQ in March 2026. Earlier this year, Merlin completed the Critical Design Review for its C-130J autonomy program with U.S. Special Operations Command, validating the system's design readiness and advancing the program into aircraft integration activities, as well as unveiled its first product family for large, multi-crew aircraft, Condor. Together, these milestones represent Merlin's broader vision of delivering a single autonomy platform capable of supporting both defense and commercial aircraft from takeoff to touchdown.

"For more than 70 years, Oshkosh has been where aviation introduces its next chapter," said Matt George, Merlin's CEO and founder. "Many members of our team first fell in love with aviation here, so returning to Oshkosh to complete what we believe is the first autonomous landing of a conventional fixed wing aircraft in EAA AirVenture history makes this milestone especially meaningful. We're incredibly grateful to the EAA air and ground crews, whose involvement made this achievement possible."

Find us at booth #19

If you are heading to, or already at, Wittman Regional Airport, come find Merlin at Booth #19 on Boeing Plaza. The team will be glad to talk about the C-130J program and where autonomy is headed next across defense and commercial aviation.

You can also check out one of our own planes equipped with the Merlin Pilot, or see the Merlin Pilot in action on our custom flight simulator. 

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
The views expressed in this post reflect the personal perspectives of Jonathan Oliver, a Merlin Engineering Test Pilot, and contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995; actual results may differ materially from those anticipated, and readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such statements, which speak only as of the date of this post and are subject to the risks and uncertainties described under "Risk Factors" in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Prospectus dated May 13, 2026 and our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed May 15, 2026.