Dronamics test-flies its middle-mile Black Swan delivery drone

Dronamics, the European drone transport company betting its future on what it believes will be a booming demand for middle-mile delivery services, has announced the successful first test flight of its flagship Black Swan UAV.

The first drone delivery firm to be certified as a full-fledged cargo airline by European Union regulators, Dronamics completed the initial trial run of its Black Swan craft at an airfield in Balchik. The city is located on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria – homeland of company founders Konstantin and Svilen Rangelov, who continue directing the startup they developed using the country as their base.

Dronamics said the first test outing of its Black Swan delivery drone was the culmination of months of ground testing and sub-scale flights, and was remotely flown from the company’s ground control station by two commercial airline pilots. 

The successful sortie of both the drone and supporting tech place Dronamics on course to meet its goal to launch aerial delivery services later this year for clients needing fast, affordable, and sustainable transportation of e-commerce, pharmaceutical, spare parts, medical, and perishable orders to their customers.

Read: Dronamics’ middle-mile drone delivery plan raises $40 million in pre-Series A funding

Dronamics is an outlier in the increasingly crowded drone delivery sector dominated – almost exclusively – by companies providing relatively short-distance transport of goods between retailers and food outlets and their local consumers. 

Dronamics, by contrast, will use its Black Swan drones to provide middle-mile service from hundreds to of up to 2,500 of kilometers from urban centers to recipients of orders in areas where last-mile aerial deliveries aren’t available, and where purchases are now transported by long-haul ground vehicles can take days or weeks to arrive. 

With its European cargo air carrier certificate, operational base in Malta, network of partnered regional and local airports across Europe, sufficient financial backing, and now the first successful test flight of its Black Swan drone under its belt, chief technology officer Konstantin Rangelov says Dronamics is on the cusp of making its founding dream come true.

“Since the day we first imagined what the Black Swan aircraft could look like, we’ve worked towards this flight,” says Rangelov. “Today we’ve made history and are proud to have demonstrated the validity of our drone technology.

Sibling and Dronamics CEO Svilen agrees, adding the Black Swan’s successful aerial debut has brought the company close to the launch of both live drone delivery activity and full-scale Black Swan production in Europe and Australia.

”It’s taken an enormous amount of hard work, belief, and drive to prove that what we envisioned work,” he said. “We can now focus on the next step, the rollout of our commercial operations, and we couldn’t be more excited.”