The Sunday Times Magazine • 42Santa’s little helpers
AMAZON AIR
Amazon’s drones can
fly up to 15 miles and
deliver packages
weighing 2.25kg or
under to customers
in less than 30
minutes. An Amazon
promotional video
suggests the drone
touches down to
deliver its package.
The US Federal
Aviation
Administration has
granted Amazon Air
a special class
airworthiness
certificate for its
MK27 drone.WALMART-ZIPLINE
PARTNERSHIP
The world’s biggest
supermarket
has teamed up with
Zipline, the world’s
biggest drone
operator, to test its
airborne delivery
service in rural
Arkansas. Deliveries
within a 50-mile radius
are possible in under
an hour, the
partnership claims.
Parcels are dropped
by mini parachute, so
the service is best
suited to a dispersed
population.FLYTREX
Flytrex says its
drones can carry
payloads of up to
3kg for a distance
of 2.5 miles. Packages
are lowered by thread
to a public delivery
point or to an area
outside the customer’s
home. Trials are under
way in Fayetteville,
North Carolina,
where the company
has received
permission from the
FAA to fly over
suburban areas
and make drop-offs
of supermarket items.MANNA
The Irish company has
started deliveries in an
urban area on Ireland’s
east coast after a year
of proving trials in rural
Galway delivering
groceries and fast
food. It hopes to start
deliveries in the UK
next year. Its British-
built drones can carry
up to 3kg to a distance
of 6.25 miles.
Packages are lowered
by thread to the
customer’s garden
or driveway, and
customers must be
present at delivery.“We have a
customer that
regularly gets
orders delivered
to their garden
trampoline”
the Manna drone has collision
avoidance technology, and in
the event of a “flight failure”
a parachute deploys to bring it
safely to the ground.
The CAA has recruited a senior
drone delivery expert from
Soarizon, a private aviation
company, to help prepare for
drone delivery trials in the UK.
Soarizon earlier this year oversaw
a successful operation to deliver
urgent medical supplies to the
Isle of Mull during the pandemic.
Using drones, the company and
its partner, Skyports, were able
to send personal protective
equipment from the Scottish
mainland. The island is normally
reachable by a ferry that runs three
times a week; the drones were
able to make multiple flights a day
carrying Covid tests, equipment
and medicines. Each ten-mile
flight took 15 minutes. Similar
trials for delivering medicines
and medical equipment are likely
to be licensed in the near future,
according to David Tait, the CAA’s
head of innovation. “Interest is
likely to come initially from the
healthcare sector, building out
to consumer services in the
future,” he says.
This time the drones really do
seem to be arriving — after a few
false starts. In 2016 Jeff Bezos,
Amazon’s founder, tweeted:
“First-ever #AmazonPrimeAir
customer delivery is in the
books. 13 min — click to delivery”,
after a package was sent by
drone to a farmhouse from the
Amazon fulfilment centre in
Cambridgeshire, England. It was
a distance of 765 yards.
In a widely shown cinema and
TV commercial in 2018 the
company portrayed a scene from
the “not too distant future” where
a couple used Amazon’s Prime Air
drone service to deliver football
boots needed for their daughter’s
match. Amazon received special
permission from the CAA to test
its drones, which needed a landing
area. And in 2019, Jeff Wilke, then
head of worldwide consumer
business at Amazon, told an
audience in Las Vegas that drone
deliveries were imminent.
However, there have been
few public updates since then,
while the company has poured
billions more into distribution
networks relying primarily on
road transport. Earlier this year
insiders at the UK’s Prime Air
division told Wired magazine that
the project had been “collapsing
inwards” for some time and
had dissolved into “organised
chaos”, with one former employee
saying: “It’s never going to get off
the ground.”
Amazon denies that. In a
statement it said: “We remain
committed to our Development
Centre in Cambridge where
Amazon has hundreds of talented
engineers, research scientists
and technology experts working
across a range of innovations.
Prime Air continues to have
employees in the UK and will
keep growing its presence in
the region.”
Alphabet, Google’s parent,
is running trials in Virginia,
Finland and Australia through
a drone subsidiary called Wing.
The parcels service UPS has
been delivering medical suppliesby drone during the pandemic
and Walmart, the American
supermarket giant, has used
several drone companies for
drop-offs. Drones operated by
a start-up called Flytrex have
delivered pizzas to homes in
North Carolina.
The mix of small innovators
and big corporates taking an
interest in drone delivery is likely
to persuade regulators to allow
the market to develop.
Stapleton — customer No 1
in Co Dublin — believes
drone deliveries will become
commonplace and that her two
daughters, who are in their
thirties, will get used to collecting
packages delivered by air without
even a glance skyward.
“It pays for itself in time and
petrol money, and I like the fact
that it’s not adding to traffic or
pollution,” she says. “My husband,
John, said to me, ‘Mary, did ever
we think in our lives we’d be
getting our coffee, our paper, our
breakfast through the sky?’ It’s
true, you just wouldn’t think it.”
Who knows, next Christmas
it may be possible to order your
presents on Christmas Eve
afternoon and still have them
delivered in time n