Wing’s PR-minded demonstration drone deliveries in Ireland launches as promised

As indicated just last month, drone delivery specialist Wing has begun demonstration flights in a northern suburb of Dublin as a walk-up to full services it has planned next year for Ireland’s capital, and beyond.

Last month the Alphabet-owned Google corporate cousin announced its intention to ease into activity in Ireland, and has now made good on its promises to begin limited public demonstration flights in November as “a first step” toward full service.

Its careful, take-it-slow strategy in Ireland presumably seeks to avoid provoking the same kind of resistance to drone deliveries voiced from some neighborhoods in its otherwise booming Australian business. 

Making the effort to exhibit its UAV operations to, and interact with residents and businesses in its testbed town of Lusk north of Dublin may also reflect Wing’s desire to earn the favor of locals who might otherwise reserve their loyalty to local Irish delivery company Manna Aero. 

Read more: Wing drone delivery in Ireland planned to – carefully – rival local hero Manna 

Manna has operated aerial services in two Irish localities, including Balbriggan not far from Lusk. The company plans to announce expansion to a third, Dublin-area town that will triple the number of potential households its craft can reach, before scaling to the rest of Ireland from there and launching across the European Union.

To facilitate its arrival, implantation, and gradual expansion in Ireland, Wing is initially limiting activity to demonstration drone deliveries of a limited number of products. Customers in Lusk are receiving those in one of the two open green spaces in town being used in the trial, rather than having them lowered into their yards as Wing drones do in the US, Australia, and Finland.

The company is also restricting operation of the pedological program to a couple of hours per day between Thursdays and Sundays.

The approach is being described as a consultation exercise with locals, permitting them to see and hear craft in action. Contrary to its most common operational model use elsewhere locting flight centers near partnering retailers, Wing is dispatching the automated drone deliveries from a facility about two kilometers outside Lusk.

Wing reportedly plans to offer the service free to people participating in the demonstration operation until the end of the year, before gradually rolling out full drone delivery operations around the Dublin area and Ireland sometime next year.