Drone Delivery

The UK Civil Aviation Authority has greenlit six trial projects that would help to make beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flights and medical drone delivery an everyday reality in the country.

DroneUp has launched the first of its dedicated drone deliveries of medicine to patients’ homes in eastern Virginia – the first in a potentially broad range of aerial activities organized by a collective of businesses, universities, and non-profit associations to improve healthcare in the region.

In an application that fails to qualify – by several time zones – for the vaunted “drones for good” category, a startup in Monaco has celebrated its maiden mission of delivering a luxury payload, including Champagne worth several hundred dollars, to an offshore luxury super yacht.

Deliveries of banned materials to prison inmates by drone have gotten more ambitious and audacious around the world as their frequency multiplied, but the aerial smuggling ring police in western France broke up stands out for its quasi-startup organization and efficiency.

Innovative Swiss UAV-glider company Jedsy is partnering with German medical group Asklepios Kliniken in a project to create a broad network of drone delivery routes between hospitals and labs that analyze patient blood, tissue, and other samples.

Zipline, which established its reputation as the leader in drone instant logistics services by quickly transporting medical supplies in nations around the globe, is now reinforcing its commercial UAV activities through a new partnership delivering meals for restaurant chain Mendocino Farms in western US states, using its new P2 platform.

The UK UAV company Skyports Drone Services didn’t wait long to put its decision to acquire Pyka heavy-lift cargo craft into action, announcing this week it had successfully completed a trial of their aerial applications during a Royal Navy tech demonstration event.

Drone delivery company Wingcopter has started a pilot project that would see drones delivering everyday goods for the first time in Germany.

DJI has filed paperwork with the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to bring its first-ever delivery drone, FlyCart 30, to North America. The drone was first unveiled in China in August 2023.

Payloads aboard drones used to drop contraband into prisons around the world usually comprise drugs, tobacco, and cellphones, though one curiously creative – and now definitely busted – trio in Australia decided to diversify its illicit recreational cargo by adding a USB drive filled with porn to the mix.

A French tech startup is to looking to speed the processing of medical analyses – and resulting treatment – by delivering patient samples between medical facilities using drones for a group of hospitals in the country’s Normandy region.

Even as international drone delivery company Wing continued to expand its activities around the globe over the summer, it appears to have paused aerial services in the Canberra capital of its booming Australian market amid an update of its operating model.

Leading global instant logistics company Zipline has passed another major milestone in its operational evolution – and in the future scaling of the entire drone delivery sector – by obtaining authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights.

UK drone delivery and advanced air mobility infrastructure startup Skyports has launched trials of on-demand UAV equipment provisioning flights to North Sea oil rigs in partnership with its Norwegian energy client, Equinor.  

As an additional reminder that you can’t make everyone happy – especially in this divided, frequently infuriated world – a UK medical drone delivery project has come under considerable fire for its efforts to seek prolonged flight restrictions across an expanse of airspace that locals say would effectively shut down local air traffic.

Drone delivery startup Flytrex has announced an upgrade of the method it uses to upload food orders destined for customer households, as part of an effort to reduce processing and transport time and permit the company to continue expanding its aerial business activity.

Aerial transport and services company Drone Delivery Canada has won work with a Canadian government defense agency for an initial series of trials of the startup’s Canary UAV, which if successful could lead to an extension of the relationship.

Wing, the drone delivery firm owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, is seeking FAA approval to expand its retail package delivery service in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas. The company says it wants to establish a network of up to 25 drone nests, with each unit conducting as many as 400 deliveries per day in a six-mile radius.

Global air services company Bristow Group is looking to diversify from its historic passenger transport activities by securing preferred delivery of medium-haul Elroy Air Chaparral drones to facilitate its expansion into cargo operation.

Walmart has found a new partner to expand its drone delivery services. The retail giant is teaming up with Wing – a drone delivery firm owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet – to reach an additional 60,000 homes in Texas.

DJI has officially entered the delivery and logistics market with the launch of a new drone in China today. The just-released FlyCart 30 is the tech giant’s first-ever carrier drone and it comes with two modes of delivery: a cargo box and a winch crane system.