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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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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Zipline on Monday announced plans to significantly expand a medical drone delivery initiative within the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS) in collaboration with Apian—which, interestingly, partnered with Wing in August. The program will roll out in fall 2024.

“Today, 3,000-pound gas vehicles driven by humans are used to deliver 3-pound packages billions of times per year,” said Keller Rinaudo Cliffton, CEO and co-founder of Zipline. “It’s expensive, slow, and bad for the environment. This decision means that the NHS can start to transition delivery to solutions that are 10 times as fast, less expensive, and zero emission. This service will be delivered at a fraction of the cost of the existing solution and will help drive financial savings to the NHS in the longer term.”

Meanwhile, Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, announced last week that the FAA approved it for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations without visual observers (VOs), or humans who are stationed below the flight path to keep an eye on the drones. Coincidentally, the approval is a summary grant based on BVLOS exemptions the regulator awarded in September to four firms—including, you guessed it, Zipline.

Zipline Expands to the UK

As of mid-December, Zipline drones have made more than 850,000 deliveries. The company says it completes a trip every 70 seconds. Zipline got its start operating in sub-Saharan Africa before expanding to the U.S. and Japan, picking up customers such as Walmart, Pfizer, and Cleveland Clinic. But it hasn’t yet reached the U.K.

The firm hopes to change that by working with the NHS, Europe’s largest employer, and Apian, a healthcare logistics provider co-founded by a team of former NHS doctors. Apian’s flagship product is an automated, on-demand delivery system that will allow Zipline to easily fulfill orders placed by the NHS.

The new service will provide on-demand drone delivery of prescriptions, wound care, and other medical products to more than 30 hospitals, general practitioners, and care homes across the region.

“I’ve seen firsthand the impact that running out of supplies can have on patient health outcomes,” said Dr. Christopher Law, medical director and co-founder of Apian. “Healthcare should benefit from on-demand delivery, much like consumers now do in their personal lives. Delivering critical products with drones, where and when they’re most needed, will improve supply chain efficiency and give doctors, nurses, and clinicians more time to focus on the most important thing—their patients.”

Zipline will build a hub for the service near the Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Northumberland, England. From there, its autonomous, fixed-wing drones—or Zips, as the company refers to them—will travel up to 130 sm (113 nm) round trip in most weather conditions, floating packages gently to the ground using parachutes.

The Zips use technologies, such as artificial intelligence and an acoustic detect and avoid (DAA) system, to navigate around tall buildings or other aircraft. Each is equipped with redundant safety systems and supervised by trained personnel, who can track flights and intervene when needed.

Zipline intends to centralize inventory of the NHS’ most frequently ordered products: prescription medicines, wound care products, and joint replacement implants, to name a few. These will be flown to Hexham General Hospital, Wansbeck General Hospital, Haltwhistle War Memorial Hospital, and other regional health facilities, within minutes of receiving an order.

Eventually, the partners expect to deliver to “significantly more” health facilities. According to Zipline, the service should help providers move away from last-minute logistics to reduce the number of canceled procedures, which could reduce wait times. It’s expected to launch next year with Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust.

“This expansion with Zipline and Apian is an exciting next step as we strive to improve services for the hundreds of thousands of patients we serve,” said James Mackey, CEO of Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust. “We believe this innovative technology could be used to improve healthcare outcomes, save money, and eliminate supply chain complexities, and we’re keen to get started.”

Wing—which primarily delivers items such as food, wellness products, and household essentials—is working with Apian to add its own drones to U.K. medical logistics networks. The two plan to deliver pharmacy items, lab samples, and medical devices and supplies in South Dublin, Ireland, as early as this year.

However, the Alphabet subsidiary remains heavily focused on the U.S. market.

Wing Sheds Operational Restrictions

As Zipline adds a previously announced Wing partner, Wing is leveraging a previously announced Zipline approval to bolster its own operations.

The company on Friday said the FAA approved its DAA tech for BVLOS operations without VOs, allowing its drones to use ADS-B instead. The new permissions extend to the airspace above Dallas, where Wing serves customers within a 6-mile radius out of a Walmart Supercenter in the suburb of Frisco.

The firm said the exemption will allow it to remove VOs across Dallas and similar airspace around other major U.S. cities. Following Zipline’s landmark flight last month, Wing will be one of the first drone delivery providers to fly unencumbered by VOs.

“Overall, the FAA’s approval for DAA and recognition of broader strategic deconfliction and [uncrewed traffic management] applications will allow us to operate more efficiently and work toward scaled operations nationwide,” Wing wrote in a blog post. “Starting with communities across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, this action supports our path toward expanding our service across the U.S.”

Wing’s approval is a summary grant, which is essentially a streamlined authorization for a “copycat” company with similar infrastructure, aircraft, and technology to those who have already been approved. In lieu of a final rule on BVLOS operations, the FAA expects to use summary grants to enable early services without overbearing restrictions. Amazon Prime Air, for example, is another recipient.

It’s unclear which of the initial approvals Wing piggybacked off of to obtain its new permissions. But of the four firms to receive exemptions, Zipline’s is the most similar—it too was permitted to replace VOs with its DAA system in a few key markets.

“Our holistic approach to BVLOS flight has been used for commercial deliveries on three continents for several years,” Wing said in its blog post. “It is grounded in avoiding potential conflict before flights ever take off and utilizes in-flight DAA to add an additional layer of safety. Wing has demonstrated the effectiveness and safety of this approach with operational flight data, extensive simulation, and flight test.”

While not as flashy as an international expansion, the removal of VOs could be a big deal for Wing. Without the need to station humans on the ground, the company could greatly expand its delivery range while lowering operational costs. It’s one of the few paths to scale available to industry players, who are just beginning to turn visions of drone-filled skies into reality.

The updates from Wing and Zipline may also have implications for smaller industry players and startups. Having each made several hundred thousand deliveries, the two firms already have a leg up on the competition. Now, the rich are getting richer—and lesser known rivals may need to do even more to catch up.

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Trick question—the FAA requires commercial drone operators to station humans on the ground, called visual observers (VOs), to keep an eye on every flight. So, the aircraft technically aren’t allowed to fly where no one sees them.

That is, unless you have a waiver, like the one drone delivery provider Zipline secured in September. On Friday, Zipline, which primarily delivers medical cargo such as blood, vaccines, and prescriptions in the U.S. and abroad, used that approval to complete what it says was the first beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone flight in the U.S. without VOs.

Human observers were replaced by Zipline’s detect and avoid (DAA) system, which is integrated onboard its drones. The company is a defendant in an ongoing patent infringement lawsuit disputing its use of the tech, filed in August 2022.

The drone delivery giant had already flown BVLOS under prior FAA exemptions. But last week was the first time it—or any other firm in the U.S.—has flown without VOs along the route. There is no video of the flight, since no one was there to see it.

“This is widely considered the holy grail of approvals for scaling drone delivery operations,” said Okeoma Moronu, head of global aviation regulatory affairs at Zipline. “We thank the FAA for their leadership and support throughout this process.”

BVLOS refers to flight beyond the view of the pilot or operator. But in the U.S., the FAA requires VOs to keep an eye on BVLOS drone flights. In other words, these flights are not truly beyond the visual line of sight, and they’re often limited to small service areas as a result. 

Removing the VOs, therefore, can greatly expand the scope of a drone delivery provider’s operations beyond where it’s able to station humans on the ground.

“This exemption from the FAA represents a monumental shift for logistics and equitable access in the U.S.,” Liam O’Connor, chief operating officer of Zipline, said in a blog post. “It builds the foundation for Zipline to scale to deliver food, medicine, consumer goods and other supplies to millions of Americans on demand, and to do so in an environmentally conscious way, resulting in 97 percent fewer emissions per delivery than a gas-powered vehicle.”

Zipline flew its Platform 1 (P1) drone without VOs in Salt Lake City within an hour of receiving the all-clear from the FAA. Ground-based personnel were replaced by onboard perception technology, including the company’s DAA system. DAA functions like a bat’s echolocation, detecting aircraft as far as 2 miles away using acoustics.

“This system has been tested by flying tens of thousands of real-world miles around the globe and through tens of thousands of test encounters with aircraft,” said O’Connor. “It has been designed to operate with the highest level of safety regardless of visual observers along flight routes.”

Zipline’s use of DAA tech is in dispute. In August 2022, technology innovator Scientific Applications and Research Associates (SARA) filed a lawsuit accusing the drone delivery provider of patent infringement.

SARA’s patent, entitled “Acoustic Airspace Collision Detection System,” describes a system that relies on sound to detect nearby aircraft or obstacles, similar to Zipline’s. It was awarded in 2009. The company’s complaint alleges Zipline breached a confidential non-disclosure agreement between the firms and relied on portions of SARA’s patented design in the development of its own DAA system. The case remains active, and Zipline has denied all claims.

“Our revolutionary Detection and Avoidance system uses proprietary technology that more than 100 Zipline engineers independently developed specifically for our aircrafts,” a Zipline spokesperson told FLYING. “This lawsuit entirely lacks merit and we will vigorously defend ourselves.”

A spokesperson for SARA gave its counterpoint statement, telling FLYING the company “will continue to vigorously defend our intellectual property in the legal proceedings now underway.”

Nonetheless, the FAA in September deemed Zipline’s onboard perception system, combined with a hefty helping of operational restrictions, to be just as safe as placing VOs along the company’s routes. Those limitations require Zipline to fly below 400 feet; maintain a list of aircraft components; submit a collision and avoidance plan for all operational locations; and steer its drones well clear of other aircraft.

The regulator’s approval allows Zipline to fly without VOs in Bentonville, Arkansas, and Salt Lake City, where the company is now delivering to customers without the requirement. It plans to expand the approach across its U.S. operations.

“Earlier this year, Zipline became the first company in U.S. history to receive approval from the FAA to leverage an onboard perception system to enable autonomous long-distance drone delivery flights, and [Friday], we made history doing just that,” said Moronu. “This means that Zipline can now go from serving a few thousand homes to serving hundreds of thousands of homes within the U.S.”

What It Means

Calling it the holy grail may sound dramatic, but the removal of VOs should have a significant effect on Zipline’s operations. 

Its drones are capable of flying nearly twice as far as previous approvals permitted. And without the need for VOs, the door is open for the company to operate much longer routes in the U.S., similar to those it flies in Africa. The reduced reliance on human capital also figures to decrease operating costs.

Other companies should be excited about Zipline’s new permissions too.

In lieu of a permanent rule for BVLOS operations, the FAA awards temporary waivers to certain regulations. In September, the agency gave BVLOS permissions to four firms, including Zipline. 

Another recipient, UPS Flight Forward, was permitted to replace VOs on BVLOS routes with remote operations centers, which could be tens or even hundreds of miles away from its actual operations. Phoenix Air Unmanned was also authorized for BVLOS operations without VOs.

However, the permissions are not permanent. The FAA uses waivers to collect data on BVLOS flights, which it hopes will inform its proposed rule on BVLOS regulations, published in the Federal Register in May. The proposal is based on recommendations from the agency’s BVLOS Advisory Rulemaking Committee, a coalition of industry stakeholders tasked with building the framework for a final rule.

The waivers are rare—only a handful of drone operators have obtained them, and nearly all come with significant restrictions. But the FAA expects September’s round of approvals will open things up.

“Our goal is to work towards summary grants as we continue towards rulemaking,” said David Boulter, FAA associate administrator for aviation safety, at the Commercial UAV Expo in Las Vegas that month.

Summary grants are essentially streamlined authorizations for “copycat” companies with similar infrastructure, aircraft, and technology to those who have already been approved. 

The FAA intentionally picked applicants with four different use cases to simplify the waiver process for a wide spectrum of operators. A medical drone delivery provider, for example, could look to Zipline’s approval as a blueprint for the operational requirements needed to secure its own BVLOS permissions.

For now, though, only a handful of operators can routinely fly commercial BVLOS drone flights, and many of them are using waivers that are several years old. 

Out of the five companies that have been awarded FAA standard Part 135 air carrier certificates, Zipline and UPS Flight Forward now have the longest wait before their BVLOS permissions expire. Amazon Prime Air, Alphabet’s Wing, and Flytrex partner Causey Aviation Unmanned are the other three firms authorized for commercial operations under Part 135.

Those companies certainly have a leg up on the competition. But with the removal of VOs, Zipline may have the entire field beat. The company says it makes about 10,000 commercial deliveries per week, equating to about one every 70 seconds. Already, it’s completed more than 815,000 deliveries across seven countries, dwarfing all other competitors—Wing is the next closest with about 350,000 as of October.

“Zipline can now have the kind of positive impact in the U.S. that we’ve had in other countries where we can fly more than 140 miles round trip, beyond the visual line of sight of any observer, all day every day,” said O’Connor. “We have flown over 50 million commercial autonomous miles around the world, carrying everything from blood, pharmaceuticals, vaccines, educational materials, food, and convenience items to tens of millions of people.”

The next step for Zipline will be the introduction of its Platform 2 (P2) system, which it says will make 10-mile deliveries in as little as 10 minutes. P2 will introduce several new pieces of tech, including a delivery droid that will replace P1’s parachute delivery system; easily installable docking and charging stations; and what is essentially a drone drive-thru window.

P2 emphasizes automation, with the only human involvement coming from the employees loading orders and remote pilots overseeing each flight. The system is expected to debut next year, though the company plans to continue P1 operations in certain markets.

It’s unclear, however, whether Zipline’s VO permissions extend beyond P1 operations. The FAA identified the company’s Sparrow drone, or P1 Zip, which it uses to conduct P1 flights, as the approved model. The new system will rely on a slightly different model, the P2 Zip. Zipline did not immediately respond to FLYING‘s request for comment.

As the FAA relaxes VO requirements for other drone operators, Vance Hilderman, CEO of aviation consultancy AFuzion, told FLYING there will likely be new problems for the regulator to solve.

Specifically, urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxis, will increasingly share the airspace below 500 feet with drones, creating the potential for intersections with drone delivery routes—and collisions. Hilderman suggested the adoption of publicly published UAM routes, which could ensure drones are not in the path of other low-flying aircraft.

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