Drone delivery in the United States (U.S.) has taken flight. Flirty Inc., in partnership with the City of Reno completed the first Federal Aviation Authority (FAA)-approved drone delivery in 2015 as part of the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP), a public-private research collaboration. Wing, a Google company, was the first company to receive Part 135 standard certification (air carrier certificate) approval as a “drone airline,” in partnership with the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership IPP in April 2019. Later that year, UPS Flight Forward and Swiss company Matternet, partnered with NCDOT IPP to obtain the second such public aircraft operator approval. More recently, the University of Alaska - Fairbanks IPP has been using drones to deliver medical and other supplies to remote communities. All of these initiatives were part of the official FAA IPP program, which ended on October 25, 2020 and has now transitioned into BEYOND (BVLOS Expanding Your Operations Needing Drones). And then there’s DroneUp.
Topics: drones; drone deliveries; DroneUp; Part 107; Part 135; Mary-Caitlin Ray; Tom Walker