Delivery drones may soon take off in the US, here's why

Qatar Tribune

a day ago

Agencies
Delivery drones are so fast they can zip a pint of ice cream to a customer's driveway before it melts.
Yet the long-promised technology has been slow to take off in the United States. More than six years after the Federal Aviation Administration approved commercial home deliveries with drones, the service mostly has been confined to a few suburbs and rural areas.
That could soon change. The FAA proposed a new rule last week that would make it easier for companies to fly drones outside of an operator's line of sight and therefore over longer distances. A handful of companies do that now, but they had to obtain waivers and certification as an air carrier to deliver packages.
While the rule is intended to streamline the process, authorized retailers and drone companies that have tested fulfilling orders from the sky say they plan to make drone-based deliveries available to millions more U.S. households.Walmart and Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, currently provide deliveries from 18 Walmart stores in the Dallas area. By next summer, they expect to expand to 100 Walmart stores in Atlanta; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston; and Orlando and Tampa, Florida.
After launching its Prime Air delivery service in College Station, Texas, in late 2022, Amazon received FAA permission last year to operate autonomous drones that fly beyond a pilot's line of sight. The e-commerce company has since expand its drone delivery program to suburban Phoenix and has plans to offer the service in Dallas, San Antonio, Texas, and Kansas City.
The concept of drone delivery has been around for well over a decade. Drone maker Zipline, which works with Walmart in Arkansas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, began making deliveries to hospitals in Rwanda in 2016. Israel-based Flytrex, one of the drone companies DoorDash works with to carry out orders, launched drone delivery to households in Iceland in 2017.But Wing CEO Adam Woodworth said drone delivery has been in 'treading water mode' in the U.S. for years, with service providers afraid to scale up because the regulatory framework wasn't in place.
'You want to be at the right moment where there's an overlap between the customer demand, the partner demand, the technical readiness and the regulatory readiness,' Woodworth said. 'I think that we're reaching that planetary alignment right now.'
DoorDash, which works with both Wing and Flytrex, tested drone drop-offs in rural Virginia and greater Dallas before announcing an expansion into Charlotte. Getting takeout food this way may sound futuristic, but it's starting to feel normal in suburban Brisbane, Australia, where DoorDash has employed delivery drones for several years, said Harrison Shih, who leads the company's drone program.
'It comes so fast and it's something flying into your neighborhood, but it really does seem like part of everyday life,' Shih said.
Even though delivery drones are still considered novel, the cargo they carry can be pretty mundane. Walmart said the top items from the more than 150,000 drone deliveries the nation's largest retailer has completed since 2021 include ice cream, eggs and Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Unlike traditional delivery, where one driver may have a truck full of packages, drones generally deliver one small order at a time. Wing's drones can carry packages weighing up to 2.5 pounds. They can travel up to 12 miles round trip. One pilot can oversee up to 32 drones.
Zipline has a drone that can carry up to 4 pounds and fly 120 miles round trip. Some drones, like Amazon's, can carry heavier packages.