Last month, a remote food delivery drone owned by Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, crashed into electric power lines en route to a suburban home in Brisbane, Australia.  The collision caused a fire that briefly knocked out power to area residents.  The company apologized for the incident, which may have been caused by equipment failure, and its flights – 200,000 in Australia alone as of March 2022 – have resumed.  But can more such incidents be expected in the months and years ahead?

For all the hype, remote delivery drones may not be all that they’re cracked up to be.  Amazon and Walmart among other US corporate giants also have plans to expand remote food and package delivery starting next year.  But many local communities aren’t yet on board with the idea. Concerns over possible invasions of privacy – a long-standing concern about drones – have been raised in local town council meetings. So have fears of crashes, damage to property and possible injuries to local residents, pets and farm animals.  In fact, some US localities are already on record opposing the planned remote deliveries of Amazon and other companies.

Even in Australia, Wing’s primary customers tend to be residents of remote rural areas that are well beyond the reach of existing delivery systems, usually part-time contractors driving cars or riding bicycles and scooters. The flight time and range of remote delivery drones is still highly limited – usually just 10-12 minutes for a flight of a mile or two.  Part of the problem is the drone’s limited battery power.  Another may be local regulations requiring drones to be operated within the operator’s visual line of sight, which means unmanned drones may not be permitted at all.

In the United States Walmart is planning to expand its same day drone-delivery service to 34 of its stores in 5 states by the end of 2022, but due to the same logistical obstacles only homes located within a one mile radius of a Walmart store qualify for deliveries.  And only a small sample of goods within the drone’s ten-pound payload limit – mainly food and smaller kitchen and household items, including diapers and silverware – are available for aerial transport.  Amazon is also gearing up a remote drone package service, known as Prime Air, which promises to deliver goods in as little as 60 minutes following a customer’s online purchase. But here the payload limit is just 5 pounds or less, again limiting the goods that might qualify.

Amazon has experienced its own share of drone delivery mishaps, including a March 2022 incident in which a Prime Air drone on a test flight crashed in rural Oregon, touching off a multi-acre blaze that took hours to contain.  That incident came just days after an earlier Prime Air crash that resulted from a propeller malfunction.  Thanks to recurring incidents such as these, drone deliveries in more concentrated urban areas are still a long way off, industry experts say.

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