Drone deliveries are appearing in America’s skies

A drone appears in the vast Texas sky, drops a small cardboard box in a suburban park, and immediately takes off, almost noiselessly, into neighborhood indifference. Touted for years as a utopia for some, a dystopia for others, drone delivery has indeed become a reality in parts of the United States. Skeptics doubt they can be deployed on a large scale, while their advocates see them as a safer, greener and faster alternative to trucks.

That day, Tiffany Bokhari in Frisco, north of Dallas, received her chips and soda minutes after placing an order on the app from Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet. “The bottle is still wet and very cold”cheers the 51-year-old Texan, opening the box on the ground.

The Wing currently occupies just a few dozen square kilometers, where it is content to deliver items from the Walgreens brand and local ice cream parlor Blue Bell. But the company already provides up to 1,000 daily deliveries in Australia’s Brisbane metropolitan area. It is also available in Finland and limits its loads to just over one kilogram. “Or fried chicken…” smiles Jonathan Bass, Wing’s director of marketing and communications. “Help visualize what can be moved”.

If hot meals, medicine and small things like toothbrushes are gradually finding their place in American skies, medical equipment has been being transported by drones in some regions of Africa for several years now. Propeller vehicles are used there to deliver perishable goods such as blood when there is no reliable air infrastructure. The United States is not there yet, but similar services continue to be deployed in Texas, California, Virginia and North Carolina thanks to Wing, Israel’s Flytrex or e-commerce giant Amazon.

The latter’s founder, Jeff Bezos, made headlines in 2013 by revealing his first drone delivery tests on CBS. He predicted their generalization in the next five years. Nothing has happened, despite the company’s deployment in a large number of everyday industries, from streaming to health and food. A 10-hectare brush fire that one of his cars caused during a crash last year somewhat dampened the group’s fervor.

Progress has been less chaotic for Wing, which launched in April “The First Commercial Drone Delivery Service” In the US metropolitan area of ​​Dallas-Fort Worth. Some experts, however, note the limits of this means of delivery. “It would take a small army of drones to deliver 150 to 200 packages by truck.”writes Bloomberg Opinion columnist Thomas Black, for whom small planes remain relevant for urgent deliveries.

For Yariv Bash, CEO of Flytrex, delivering food by electric drone not only emits less greenhouse gas than by car, but they are also safer. “Drones don’t get tired, text while driving, or drink alcohol before driving.” he told AFP. “The service is just better”. In the United States, the issue of safety has been at the heart of the government’s deliberations on the issuance of operating permits.

Although it only uses a less-than-5-kilogram Styrofoam drone, Wing had to obtain the same certifications as DHL or UPS, which make deliveries by plane, points out Jonathan Bass of the Alphabet subsidiary. He notes that a committee created by the United States Air Force Administration has made recommendations in favor of special regulation of drones. “I think it will bring growth in the U.S.”he explains.

This is already happening. In a report published in March, consulting firm McKinsey noted that the number of drone deliveries rose from 6,000 in 2018 to nearly half a million last year. “But the future is uncertain”– is attached to the report. “Regulations, consumer acceptance and costs will determine whether the industry reaches its full potential.”.