On April 7th, Wing, Google parent Alphabet’s drone delivery company, will launch its first commercial operation in the United States. The business’s quadcopters will be available to “tens of thousands” of households in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area’s suburban cities of Frisco and Little Elm, according to the company.
Customers can order things from Walgreens, Blue Bell Creameries, Easyvet, and Texas Health, among a few other retailers that have partnered with Wing. Wing’s business plan entails placing small shipping containers near participating businesses to serve as mini-hangers from which Wing’s drones will be launched. Employees at each partnered store take the items outdoors after receiving orders online and load them into a cardboard package attached to the drone. Wing’s operations team then remotely pilots the drone to the customers’ residences.
We’re going to be starting small in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, with service to tens of thousands of suburban homes in the City of Frisco and Town of Little Elm.
Said Adam Woodworth in a blog post
We’ve staged drones at a local Walgreens store, so they’re ready to fly health and wellness products directly to customer homes.
In addition to Walgreens, we’ll be delivering items with three new partners in Frisco and Little Elm. We’re going to be delivering ice cream from Blue Bell Creameries (yes – it will stay frozen on those hot Texas summer days!), prescription pet medications from easyvet, and first aid kits from Texas Health.
This is an important milestone for Wing and drone delivery in the U.S. It simply would not have been possible without the support of the public officials and the citizens of Frisco and Little Elm, and our merchant partners.
I do want to set clear expectations: not everyone who lives within range of our drones will be able to order on Day 1. We’re going to invite customers in groups to make sure everyone has a good first experience with drone delivery.
he added.
Wing has had a string of minor achievements, most notably completing its 200,000th delivery in three countries: the United States, Finland, and Australia. Its greatest success has been in Logan, Australia, a suburb of Brisbane where it has completed more than 50,000 deliveries.
Wing’s drones are capable of flying as both fixed-wing planes and hovering copters. The aircraft, unlike Amazon’s delivery drones, do not need to land to deliver products. Wing’s ship flies to its destination, descends at a height of 23 feet (seven metres), and then tethers its packages to the ground, releasing them autonomously.