The regulator on Tuesday authorized commercial drone flights without visual observers (VOs) in Dallas-area airspace for two companies: Zipline and Wing, the drone delivery subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet. The firms will manage the airspace themselves with FAA oversight.

“The industry is providing us with a lot of detailed documentation, and we’re providing a lot of oversight,” said Jarrett Larrow, regulatory and policy lead at the FAA’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration Office. “These public-private partnerships are key to safely integrating drones into our National Airspace System.”

Both Zipline and Wing have robust drone delivery services in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in partnership with Walmart. But limiting the firms is a pesky regulation called the beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) rule, which limits drone operations to within the drone operator’s field of view of the operator.

The FAA is working to release the Normalizing UAS BVLOS Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), which would authorize drone operators to fly aircraft where they cannot physically see them. It expects to finalize the measure this year.

But in lieu of a firm rule, the regulator awards BVLOS permissions on a case-by-case basis through waivers. Typically, these exemptions require the companies to maintain VOs along delivery routes to monitor their drones. However, a handful of companies have been able to replace VOs with proprietary or third-party detect and avoid systems or UAS traffic management (UTM) software.

Without these permissions, drone delivery companies are greatly limited in the scope of their operations, which, in order to keep eyes on the aircraft at all times, are often constricted to small areas.

The new FAA authorization seeks to change that, at least in the Dallas area.

Beginning in August, Zipline and Wing will be allowed to deliver packages using UTM technology to keep their drones from colliding. In short, airspace would be managed by private companies with FAA oversight.

“This is the first time the FAA has recognized a third-party to safely manage drone-to-drone interactions,” said Praveen Raju, a program manager in the FAA’s NextGen Office. “As always, safety comes first, and we required exhaustive research and testing before giving the green light.”

Zipline and Wing will use UTM to share flight data and routes with other airspace users, with all flights occurring below 400 feet agl and far away from crewed aircraft. Consensus standards developed by the drone industry and accepted by the FAA describe how the technology can accommodate multiple layers of drone operations, according to the regulator.

The agency also said that Zipline and Wing since 2023 have safely conducted thousands of live drone test flights in shared Dallas-area airspace. Now, commercial flights are expected to provide the FAA with valuable information that could allow it to expand BVLOS operations without special exemptions nationwide.

The regulator on Tuesday said companies and organizations worldwide have shown interest in the project and how they can install their own UTM systems in the U.S.

“UTM is a critical piece for safe, routine, scalable BVLOS operations and to ensure everyone has equitable access to the airspace,” Larrow said. “If service providers and operators are successful in cooperatively sharing the airspace using UTM, it will be a repeatable process nationwide.”

Zipline and Wing were among the first drone delivery firms to obtain Part 135 operator permissions from the FAA and have worked closely with the regulator for years. Should the agency continue to look to the companies to pilot BVLOS operations, it may add permissions to their service areas in other states such as Arkansas, Utah, and Virginia.

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Dawn Aerospace, manufacturer of the Mk-II Aurora, announced that New Zealand’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has granted it approval to fly at “unlimited” speeds at up to 80,000 feet in altitude. The company is permitted to fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of a remote pilot and will not be limited to restricted airspace.

Dawn describes the Aurora as “an aircraft with the performance of a rocket.” According to the company, the aircraft is designed to be the first vehicle capable of flying to the Kármán line—which at about 100 kilometers in altitude is considered the edge of space—twice in one day.

“This unlocks the next major performance milestone for the Mk-II vehicle, namely supersonic flight,” said Stefan Powell, CEO of Dawn. “To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first privately funded [uncrewed aerial vehicle] to break the sound barrier.”

The only successful supersonic airliner, Concorde, which was developed by two now-defunct manufacturers, was retired more than two decades ago. But a new crop of companies, including Dawn and Boom Supersonic, are trying to break the sound barrier again.

Unlike Boom’s Overture, which is being developed as a passenger airline, Dawn’s Aurora is intended for space transportation.

The Mk-II first flew in 2021 and has since completed more than 50 test flights, operating under both jet and rocket power. It last flew in 2023, reaching 200 knots at an altitude of 9,000 feet. But those flights were under a more restrictive license than the one obtained by the company last week.

The goal of the firm’s upcoming campaign, which will comprise about a dozen flights between July and September, is to reach Mach 1.1—the boundary of supersonic speed—at an altitude of 70,000 feet. It hopes to fly to space twice in one day and spend about 180 seconds in microgravity.

If it achieves all objectives, the company believes it would set records for speed, altitude, and climb rate for a self-powered aircraft.

Dawn’s primary business is manufacturing propulsion systems for satellites, and it has 76 thrusters in space. But the company is now looking to enter the suborbital space.

The Aurora is a first-stage demonstrator for the company’s more robust Mk-III—a two-stage-to-orbit model that will take off from the runway and deploy a 250 kilogram satellite at the apex of its flight path.

According to Dawn, it is remotely piloted, low cost, and “rapidly reusable,” designed to fly multiple times per day and between 100 and 1,000 times over its lifespan.

Its engine uses storable, “aircraft friendly” propellants that allow the vehicle to take off without having to wait to be fueled. The engine is also carbon neutral, producing no hydrocarbons during operation.

“Room temperature storable propellants will not boil off, and carbon fiber will not suffer from microcracking, as is common in cryogenic composite tanks,” the company says on its website.

Dawn chose a winged design in order to reduce the risk of an engine malfunction, which could jeopardize the landing—and therefore reusability—of the Mk-II. It will be certified as an aircraft in New Zealand. The model takes off like a conventional aircraft, accelerating to Mach 3 speeds and bending upward into a near-vertical route. On the way down, it descends and glides horizontally back to the runway.

Dawn’s first phase of aircraft testing, conducted with the company’s jet-powered Mk-I, comprised eight hours of flight time across 47 flights. After receiving CAA approval for rocket-powered flight in March 2023, it began flying in just a few weeks.

So far, the Mk-II has made three rocket-powered flights, completed within a three-day span a little over one year ago, as part of the second phase of aircraft development, with the goal of reaching the Kármán line under certification.

According to a blog post from Powell, the current version of the vehicle has a maximum altitude of about 60,000 feet, which will require the company to develop a more powerful variant called the Mk-IIB.

“At full performance, the Mk-II will fly faster and 2.5 times higher than any prior aircraft that takes off from a runway, including the current record holder, the SR-71 Blackbird,” said Powell. “That is the power of bringing rocket performance to an aircraft platform.”

Despite being a demonstrator, Dawn plans to one day use the aircraft for Earth observation, high-speed flight research, in-space science including microgravity research, and even civil and defense applications. According to Powell, the company is already fielding interest in a commercial version of the Mk-II and will be in a “prime position” to roll one out once it reaches the Kármán Line.

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In a letter to the FAA penned by John Nichols, the mayor of College Station, Texas—one of two locations where Prime Air began flying in 2022—on behalf of the city council he urged the regulator to deny a request that would more than double the service’s range. The mayor cited noise concerns from residents as the chief factor guiding the city’s position.

College Station has become a critical hub for Prime Air, which has struggled to get its drone delivery service off the ground. The city was intended to be one of two key launch markets in addition to Lockeford, California, but the latter service was shuttered in April after a less-than-stellar performance in a little more than its first year.

That leaves College Station as the sole market for Prime Air operations, and Amazon recently bolstered the service by adding on-demand delivery of prescription medications for the flu, asthma, pneumonia, and more. The e-commerce giant is also looking to bring drones to the Phoenix metro area in Arizona and has teased an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy.

Last year, Prime Air unveiled its MK30 drone, which is rangier, quieter, and more durable than its current MK27-2. To integrate the new model into its Texas fleet, the company submitted a draft supplemental environmental assessment to the FAA summarizing the MK30’s potential impacts on College Station residents.

Since the new model can fly in light rain and more extreme temperatures than the MK27-2, Amazon proposes operations 365 days per year, an increase from 260. Flights per day would increase from 200 to about 470 and would take place between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. CT, removing an FAA restriction limiting flights to daytime hours.

Under the proposal, the company’s operating area would expand from 43.7 to 174 square miles. The expansion to 43.7 square miles happened earlier this year, when the FAA granted Amazon approval to fly its drones where its pilots cannot physically see them. Comparable waivers have been handed out to competitors such as Zipline, Alphabet’s Wing, and UPS’s Flight Forward, similarly allowing those companies to expand their service areas through remote operations.

If approved, the lighter restrictions would allow Prime Air to fly more than 170,000 operations per year in College Station with the MK30, compared to 52,000 with its current model.

Nichols said that the city is excited to be one of the few in the U.S. to host a drone delivery service. But that came with a caveat.

“While the city is supportive of Amazon Prime Air’s efforts, we do not support their request in its entirety,” Nichols wrote. “Since locating in College Station, residents in neighborhoods adjacent to Amazon Prime Air’s facility have expressed concern to the city council regarding drone noise levels, particularly during takeoff and landing, as well as in some delivery operations.”

According to Nichols, residents “have continued” to voice concerns regarding Prime Air’s planned expansion, worrying that the noise will only worsen. The mayor added that the expanded service area could extend beyond the city’s commercial zoning district, which is intended to limit commercial spillover into residential neighborhoods.

“Due to the level of concern from residents, the city would ask to delay the increase in service levels relating to the number of deliveries, as well as the expanded operation days and hours, until additional noise mitigation efforts are implemented by Amazon Prime Air,” Nichols wrote.

Nichols did offer support, however, for the introduction of the MK30, which is expected to be 40 percent quieter than its predecessor. It is unclear whether the new drone would represent sufficient “noise mitigation efforts” in the city council’s eyes, though Nichols said it would have a “positive effect” on residents’ displeasure.

The comment period for the environmental assessment closed on Friday, and the city and Prime Air will now have to wait for the FAA’s decision. Amazon is also awaiting comments and a final decision on a draft environmental assessment for its planned Arizona service.

Should the proposed expansion be rejected, it would represent yet another blow for Prime Air, which so far has not delivered on former CEO Jeff Bezos’ prognostications more than a decade ago.

In that time, competitors such as Zipline and Wing have risen to the top of the young industry—each of those firms has completed multiple hundred thousands of drone deliveries, including outside the U.S.

Prime Air’s future prospects may be bolstered by the MK30, which promises to address some of the company’s problems: namely range, excessive noise, and limitations on deliveries in inclement weather.

Amazon is not the only drone delivery provider contending with unhappy customers. Earlier this month, a Florida man was arrested for shooting down a Walmart delivery drone he said was flying over his house.

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Walmart on Thursday announced that later this month, customers in the fast-growing Dallas-Fort Worth area will be able to order drone delivery directly through the company’s app, with orders arriving in as little as 30 minutes.

Since introducing drone delivery in 2021, Walmart says it has completed more than 30,000 deliveries. As of January, the firm’s DFW service—operated in partnership with industry titans Zipline and Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google parent Alphabet—covers an estimated 1.8 million households.

Not all of these customers will be eligible for drone delivery through the Walmart app, at least not at first.

The retailer described the integration as a phased rollout that will add customers “as more drone delivery sites launch and drone providers receive additional regulatory approvals to fly more goods across greater distances.” Those eligible for delivery, based on the address linked to their account, will be notified through the app.

It’s unclear exactly which regulatory approvals to which Walmart is referring. But it’s worth noting that Zipline, Wing, and another Walmart partner, DroneUp, have all received beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) exemptions from the FAA.

The approval, awarded on a case-by-case basis, allows drone delivery firms to remove the visual observers (VOs) the agency normally requires to keep an eye on the aircraft. Typically, VOs are replaced by a combination of detect-and-avoid technology and remote pilots. The companies believe this reduced human capital will allow them to fly longer routes.

Walmart first enlisted Wing for its DFW service in August, and the partners now fly out of four Walmart stores located in the suburbs. The drone delivery firm has made a point of building technology that can integrate with its partners’ existing networks.

Physical infrastructure is limited to a fenced-in area that typically takes up a fraction of the store’s parking space. The company is also developing a device called the Autoloader, which enables what is essentially curbside pickup, but using drones. Rather than loading orders into the aircraft themselves, store associates would simply place them on the curb, and the Autoloader would do the rest.

Another recent innovation is a suite of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow partners to add drone delivery directly to their e-commerce platforms—a tool Walmart will now leverage.

“Our goal is to make drone delivery completely seamless for our partners and their customers,” said Adam Woodworth, CEO of Wing. “When Wing drone delivery is available within the Walmart app later this month, customers will have a wider selection and a better shopping experience than ever before. This is a major step toward making drone delivery a part of everyday life.”

The company also has a drone delivery integration with DoorDash, which in 2022 became the first company to make a service available through a third-party app. The partnership began in Australia, Wing’s largest market. But the firm in March added fast-food delivery from Wendy’s in Christiansburg, Virginia, through the DoorDash app.

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Amazon Prime Air on Thursday said it obtained FAA approval for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations, which refer to flights that cannot be directly observed by a human pilot. The company said its new permissions will allow it to immediately expand the delivery area for its MK-27 drone in College Station, Texas, one of two U.S. locations in which it began flying in 2022. Its other service, in Lockeford, California, was shut down in April.

As things stand, BVLOS authorization is considered the king of drone delivery approvals.

In lieu of a final rule on BVLOS flights—which the FAA has been developing for years but has not yet published—the agency awards temporary waivers to individual companies on a case-by-case basis. Some exemptions, called summary grants, allow a firm to piggyback off an approval given to another company if their technologies and business models are sufficiently aligned.

For those without BVLOS waivers, drone delivery areas are often limited to just a few square miles and require human observers, which can put a strain on operations.

Amazon said Prime Air engineers developed a BVLOS strategy that includes an onboard detect-and-avoid (DAA) system, which allows the company’s drones to autonomously dodge planes, helicopters, balloons, and other obstacles.

It shared with the FAA information about the system’s design, operation, and maintenance and conducted flight demonstrations in front of agency inspectors. After observing the technology in action and poring over test data, the regulator issued the approval.

Now, in lieu of human observers, remote drone pilots will oversee the aircraft while Prime Air DAA performs most of the work.

Amazon, which already dominates same- and next-day ground delivery, hopes to deliver 500 million packages per year by drone before the end of the decade. However, the company has been reluctant to provide delivery figures since it came out last year that its Lockeford service had completed just 100 deliveries after several months of availability.

This new exemption could change things. Prime Air in 2020 obtained an FAA Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, making it one of only five drone delivery companies to have obtained that approval. But a BVLOS waiver may allow it to truly compete with rivals such as Wing and Zipline, both of which received such permissions last year.

The company will start by ramping up in College Station. Later this year, it expects to begin deploying drones from hubs next to its same-day delivery site in Tolleson, Arizona, which is slated to be its next launch market. The idea is to be able to fulfill, sort, and deliver from a single location, strategically positioned to be as close to as many customers as possible.

Connections to nearby Amazon fulfillment centers will allow it to offer millions of items for same-day drone delivery, the company says. It has over 100 such facilities spread across the U.S. and more than 175 globally.

Next up for Prime Air will be adding further U.S. locations in 2025. The company is also planning an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy, where its drones will deliver from those larger fulfillment centers. It said it is working with regulators in both countries to introduce the service as soon as late 2024.

Simultaneously, Prime Air continues to hone the design of its new MK-30 drone, which will eventually replace the MK-27 in the U.S. and be the first Amazon drone flown in the U.K. and Italy. According to Amazon, it can fly twice as far as the company’s current model while emitting half as much perceived noise.

Prime Air’s chief competitor is Alphabet drone delivery subsidiary Wing, which as of May has completed more than 350,000 deliveries worldwide—including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in partnership with Walmart and Walgreens.

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The approval covers commercial BVLOS flights of AATI’s fixed-wing AiRanger drone in San Joaquin Valley, California. AiRanger will conduct pipeline surveillance and inspections on behalf of AATI partner Chevron Pipe Line Company (CPL), a subsidiary of oil and gas titan Chevron, which has helped develop the aircraft since 2019.

BVLOS is considered by many to be the pinnacle of drone regulations.

Under FAA rules, commercial drones must be flown within view of a human observer, which typically limits UAS service range and increases operational costs. In lieu of a final BVLOS regulation, which is still being developed, the agency awards waivers or exemptions for such operations on a case-by-case basis.

Most major drone operators, including Zipline and Wing, possess such approvals. AATI, though, says its exemption is the first for a UAS with AiRanger’s specifications.

The drone has a maximum takeoff weight of 220 pounds and can fly for up to 12 hours, with a range of about 750 sm (652 nm) and top altitude of 12,000 feet msl. It is intended to fly in civil airspace. AATI’s FAA waiver authorizes operations over a 4,350 square mile area at up to 8,000 feet msl.

“The uncrewed AiRanger eliminates the risk to flight crews on traditional patrol aircraft while producing 35 times less CO2,” said David Yoel, founder and CEO of AATI. “It is also capable of patrolling at 30 times the rate of BVLOS [small UAS] operating under 400 [feet].”

AiRanger is 10 feet long with an 18.2-foot wingspan and 75-pound payload, including fuel. The drone runs on a gasoline engine, typically cruising at 50 to 75 knots. 

AATI partner Iridium—which provides AiRanger’s detect and avoid (DAA) and command and control (C2) capabilities via satellite connectivity—says the aircraft “is the first UAS to demonstrate compliance with industry consensus standards for the DAA system and meet FAA requirements for aircraft right of way BVLOS operations.”

According to CPL, the manufacturer conducted DAA demonstrations for the FAA and completed agency-observed testing that validated the system could stand in for human observers. A waiver for AiRanger followed shortly after, it says.

The UAS will initially be deployed for critical infrastructure patrol, threat detection, and reporting, according to AATI, first with CPL and primarily within the oil and gas sector. It can be configured for a range of applications and carry several different pieces of equipment at once, such as remote sensing, surveillance, and particulate sensors.

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The company last week announced that the FAA confirmed its Eiger drone to be compliant with the regulator’s Remote ID rule, a key step toward expanding operations in the U.S. to go beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the operator.

RigiTech’s U.S. customers—which include medical drone delivery operator Spright, a subsidiary of helicopter operator Air Methods—could leverage the approval to commence BVLOS operations with a waiver from the FAA.

“Achieving this approval is a crucial milestone for RigiTech and the drone community at large, propelling us towards more complex and beneficial drone operations,” said David Rovira, co-founder and chief business officer of RigiTech. “We are committed to continuing our work with the FAA and other stakeholders to ensure a safe, secure, and innovative future for drone technology.”

BVLOS flights are considered some of the highest-risk operations in the drone delivery industry due to the lack of human oversight, since they take place where the operator cannot see them. In lieu of a final rule regulating BVLOS operations, the FAA approves them on a case-by-case basis using waivers.

However, many industry stakeholders are pushing for a more reliable system. Doing away with the human oversight requirement would expand—in some cases significantly—the area that drone delivery companies can serve, allowing them to attract more customers.

Remote ID is one of the ways the industry can reduce its reliance on human operators. It is essentially a digital license plate for drones, broadcasting live information such as a unique identification number, location, altitude, and velocity over a 2-3-mile radius. That information can be used by law enforcement, the FAA, or other federal agencies to monitor flights and ground unsafe drones.

The FAA’s Remote ID rule took full effect in March, requiring all agency-registered drones to be flown with broadcast capabilities installed either during or after manufacturing. 

Most manufacturers began producing remote ID-compliant drones in September 2022, according to the regulator. But a company can retrofit its aircraft to broadcast remote ID with technology such as a beacon. RigiTech says Eiger is compliant with the FAA’s standard remote ID requirements, meaning the drone is produced with broadcast capabilities already built in.

For a drone, Eiger is quite durable. The aircraft has a range of about 62 sm (54 nm) and payload of 6.6 pounds, capable of flying during daytime or nighttime and in winds as fast as 33 mph (28 knots). A temperature-controlled cargo hold allows it to carry medical and humanitarian payloads such as blood or vaccines.

Working behind the scenes is RigiTech’s RigiCloud software, which enables autonomous and remote Eiger flights—another key tenet of BVLOS operations. RigiCloud provides real-time flight tracking and creates preprogrammed routes in compliance with aviation regulatory authorities across Europe. The software even tracks drone maintenance and operator credentials to help customers avoid run-ins with regulators.

In July, RigiTech conducted successful tests of Eiger’s prototype precision dropping system, flying spare parts to Anholt Offshore Wind Farm 20 sm (17 nm) off the coast of Denmark. The system, an optional add-on to the drone, autonomously releases cargo from a few feet in the air when RigiCloud detects the drone has reached its destination. The tests were monitored remotely from the Danish capital of Copenhagen, 83 sm (72 nm) away.

In October, the State University of New York Upstate Medical University (SUNY Upstate) became the first U.S. company to conduct a domestic flight with Eiger. RigiTech has also received a handful of Eiger orders from Spright, beginning delivery of the first six systems in May.

According to the company, its systems have been approved for and flown BVLOS operations on five continents. Outside the U.S., it has laid the groundwork for initial service or begun flying in its home country of Switzerland, France, Greece, South Korea, and Uruguay. In February, RigiTech added Dutch drone operator Medical Drone Service as a customer to launch healthcare deliveries in the Netherlands.

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The company on Tuesday introduced its drone Ecosystem, a suite of ground, air, and software products wrapped into a single platform to enable drone delivery for retailers, healthcare providers, restaurants, and other customers. According to DroneUp CEO Tom Walker, the firm will roll out the solution next quarter and continue adding locations over the next 18 to 24 months.

Walker says the DroneUp Ecosystem is the first fully automated end-to-end drone delivery system. It combines a suite of software operating systems, two next-generation drones, and automated ground infrastructure, which the company believes will make its services more scalable, accessible, and affordable.

In partnership with DroneUp, Walmart operates a network of 36 hubs based out of stores in Florida, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, Utah, Arizona, and North Carolina. The world’s largest retailer is also working with drone delivery firms Zipline, Flytrex, and Alphabet’s Wing.

In addition, DroneUp has relationships with state agencies in Utah, Hawaii, Iowa, Florida, and Rhode Island.

“Our work with leading retailers and quick-service restaurants has provided us with valuable insights into the speed and convenience that end customers desire from drone delivery,” said Walker. “Our Ecosystem is designed to exceed those expectations, enabling us to perform millions of deliveries daily.”

The DroneUp Ecosystem comprises three components. On the ground is DBX, a secure outdoor locker with climate-controlled package management that can be stored in spaces smaller than a parking spot. DBX will enable autonomous package pickup and returns for customers. The locker can be reconfigured in a variety of ways, capable of being installed on the side of a building or rooftop. Depending on the configuration, it can hold as many as 100 packages.

The company’s two next-generation drones will be able to land automatically and precisely on top of DBX. The smaller model flies at 60 mph for up to 30 sm (26 nm), which DroneUp says gives the Ecosystem a 15-mile service coverage radius around integrated vendors. It can carry up to 10 pounds of cargo. A higher endurance model can fly for 100 miles round trip and accommodate heavier payloads. Both aircraft are designed to complete deliveries in less than 30 minutes.

The drones come equipped with internal package storage for rain, snow, and sun protection, and are capable of flying in winds as fast as 30 knots. DroneUp says the next-generation models will have industry-leading size and weight capacity to support a higher volume of orders than ever before. In addition, Walker notes they will make about as much noise as a refrigerator when flying at delivery altitude.

Onboard charging technology eliminates the need for ground personnel to swap out the drones’ battery packs, giving them more uptime. Onboard vertical clearance sensing, meanwhile, automatically determines the drone’s height over obstacles. At the delivery site, the drone can release a claw-like package grasper to perform aerial drops or winch up to 120 feet, enabling autonomous pickup and drop-off.

Crucially, the drones can fly from a DBX to a customer’s home or between the outdoor hubs. The automated lockers will be deployed as delivery sites in urban areas to serve apartments, college campuses, office buildings, and other hard-to-reach locations.

The process is simple. A retailer packs and places the order in the DBX, which autonomously secures and prepares it for pickup. The locker then opens its top for a drone’s winch to grab the package. Once the order arrives at another DBX, customers can scan a code or use a mobile app to complete an identification verification process and retrieve it.

Orchestrating the drones and ground infrastructure is an autonomous flight planning and control application. Walker points out that DroneUp operators will function like air traffic controllers, monitoring swaths of airspace rather than individual drones. This will allow a single operator to supervise multiple flights.

The autonomous flight planning system includes digitized maps and advanced flight coordination features, such as detect-and-avoid technology, which DroneUp maintains will enable flights beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS). The company in January obtained FAA approval to fly BVLOS without stationing human observers along routes, joining a handful of firms that also includes Zipline and Wing.

The software’s multidimensional pathfinding system allows drones to fly around, over, or under obstacles, adjusting routes accordingly. The cloud-based system can also accommodate surges in demand by allocating drones to areas with high activity.

The Ecosystem is not DroneUp’s first foray into automation. In 2023, it partnered with Iris Automation to build what is essentially an air traffic control system for uncrewed drones. The company will deploy Iris’ ground-based, detect-and-alert system across a network of “nodes” spread throughout its delivery areas. Much like cellphone towers, these will communicate airspace traffic data to improve BVLOS visibility.

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On Thursday, Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google parent Alphabet, expanded its partnership with DoorDash to the U.S. following a yearlong trial in Australia. In 2022, the companies agreed to integrate their marketplaces, allowing Wing deliveries to be facilitated through the DoorDash platform. It was the first time a drone delivery provider made its service available on a third-party app.

Initially, the service will be based out of a single Wendy’s location in Christiansburg—Wing’s first U.S. commercial market—with plans to explore other U.S. cities later this year. Dallas-Fort Worth, where Wing operates drone delivery with partners such as Walmart, is a potential candidate.

DoorDash views automation as a way to tailor solutions around customer demand and improve platform efficiency. Its partnership with Wing was born out of DoorDash Labs, a robotics and automation arm established in 2021. With the subsidiary still in its infancy, Christiansburg may well be the tip of the iceberg for DoorDash and Wing.

“We are committed to advancing last-mile logistics by building a multi-modal delivery platform that serves all sides of our marketplace,” said Harrison Shih, senior director of DoorDash Labs. “We’re optimistic about the value drone delivery will bring to our platform as we work to offer more efficient, sustainable, and convenient delivery options for consumers.”

Wing, along with medical drone delivery provider Zipline, is one of two titans in the drone delivery industry, having completed more than 350,000 deliveries. The company has flown in Christiansburg since 2019, the same year it launched service in Logan, Australia, a suburb of Brisbane.

In 2022, DoorDash became a partner, agreeing to facilitate Wing deliveries in Logan on its platform. The partners would ultimately expand the service to three locations in Australia’s Queensland region, with more than 60 participating merchants.

“Expanding our partnership with DoorDash and launching in the U.S. is a direct result of the success we’ve seen from our initial collaboration in Australia, where Wing has served tens of thousands of customers via the DoorDash app for over a year now,” said Cosimo Leipold, head of partnerships at Wing.

In Christiansburg, customers with eligible addresses can visit the DoorDash website or app and select the Wendy’s location at 2355 N. Franklin Street. At checkout, they’ll have the option to select drone delivery alongside standard delivery and pickup.

Wendy’s employees will prepare and package orders, and Wing drones will complete deliveries straight to the customer’s doorstep. From order to delivery, the process typically completes within 30 minutes. According to Wing’s early testing data from Australia, its fastest delivery took just over seven minutes.

DoorDash in 2022 explained that the service is intended for small, short-range deliveries, such as Wendy’s takeout orders, which are likely to yield smaller tips. Drones will complement the company’s delivery drivers, who will handle larger orders.

FLYING got a firsthand look at Wing’s service in Dallas-Fort Worth in October. At a Walmart Supercenter in the Dallas suburb of Frisco, the company’s operation occupies a small portion of the store’s parking lot. Other stores can set up Wing hubs on roofs or in adjacent empty spaces.

The system is almost entirely automated, designed to integrate within partners’ existing systems and workflows. All store associates need to do is bring orders from the store to the parking lot.

Wing handles things from there. An automated flight planning and uncrewed traffic management system plans routes, accounting for factors like weather, time of day, and other objects in the airspace. Then a Wing order loader attaches the payload to the drone’s tether.

All on its own, the drone takes off, flies to its destination, lowers the tether, releases the order, and flies back to continue charging. In the air, the aircraft cruises at 65 mph (56 knots) at roughly 200 feet, capable of flying in light wind, moderate rain, or even snow.

All Wing drones flying in the U.S. are overseen by operators at two Remote Operation Centers in Texas and California. Like air traffic controllers, they monitor dots on a screen and step in when an accident could occur. The company’s software also determines which drones might be in need of repairs and grounds them autonomously.

Soon, Wing’s operation will require even fewer people. The company is preparing to roll out its AutoLoader technology, which would eliminate the need for order loaders. Similar to curbside delivery, store associates will simply place orders outside for the drone to pick up on its own.

Wing is also developing a new, larger delivery drone with double the payload of its current model. About 3 in 10 Wing deliveries require two or more drones, and the updated design is intended to streamline those orders. It will complement the company’s existing model rather than replace it.

Recently, the firm obtained an FAA grant for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flights without visual observers in Dallas. Visual observers are required by the FAA for BVLOS flights unless the operator has a waiver. Wing instead will use ADS-B transponders and receivers, extending the delivery range it has with human observers along its routes.

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The drone delivery and logistics company announced Thursday that the regulator has approved it for flight beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the operator, making it one of a handful of companies with a BVLOS waiver for medical deliveries.

“Securing BVLOS approval is a testament to our dedication to safety and innovation,” said DroneUp CEO Tom Walker. “We have some significant technologies coming out of stealth this year, which when combined with BVLOS, will unlock commercial scalability that the industry and our customers have been eagerly awaiting.”

For safety reasons, the FAA requires drone flights to be visually monitored by the operator. However, the agency occasionally awards waivers that enable BVLOS flights with certain restrictions, such as visual observers (VOs) stationed along the route. 

A handful of firms—including another medical drone delivery company, Zipline—advanced past that stage in September, receiving FAA approval to remove VOs as well. DroneUp’s Part 107 waiver requires one or more VOs to monitor for other aircraft in the airspace within 2 sm of the drone. But they won’t need to maintain a visual on the drone itself.

“Our ability to fly BVLOS propels us into the next level of using drone technology, undoubtedly enhancing the efficiency of medical deliveries, ensuring that crucial supplies reach healthcare facilities and patients promptly,” said John Vernon, chief technology officer of DroneUp.

DroneUp said its waiver allows it to immediately begin flying BVLOS for Riverside Health System, a customer with facilities spread throughout Virginia. According to the company, the approval will also clear a path for BVLOS deployments across the country with new and existing customers.

Two other Walmart drone delivery partners—Zipline and Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google parent Alphabet—have similarly expanded their BVLOS permissions as the massive retailer scales its network.

Wing is one of the first drone delivery firms to leverage what the FAA calls a summary grant. Essentially, these are streamlined authorizations for “copycat” companies with similar infrastructure, aircraft, and technology to those who have already been approved. Wing, for example, piggybacked off of Zipline’s BVLOS waiver.

Zipline, UPS Flight Forward, Phoenix Air Unmanned, and uAvionix were the four firms in the FAA’s initial cohort of BVLOS recipients named last year. The agency carefully selected each company in order to open summary grants to a variety of industries. Zipline’s waiver, for example, provides a framework for BVLOS medical drone delivery, while UPS Flight Forward’s does the same for parcel drone delivery.

DroneUp—like Zipline, Wing, and other waiver recipients—says its approval could substantially reduce operational costs by cutting down on required human resources. The authorization could also expand the firm’s operations: Humans will no longer be required to visually observe its drones, creating the potential for longer routes.

Waivers such as DroneUp’s will help the FAA learn more about BVLOS operations as the regulator works to develop a final BVLOS rule. So far, the agency has convened a committee of industry stakeholders and studied its final recommendations. But there is still no firm timeline for an official set of industrywide BVLOS regulations.

In lieu of a final rule, expect the FAA to continue issuing BVLOS waivers and summary grants, which will give certain communities a glimpse of what drone delivery may look like at scale. DroneUp and Walmart currently fly out of 36 hubs in seven states, so perhaps yours will be next.

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