Drones Fly High for UPS

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Yesterday, the Federal Aviation Administration released the first approval for a retailer—the United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS)—to use unmanned aircraft, or drones, for commercial delivery services, reports The Wall Street Journal. The area now available to UPS for drone deliveries usually is off limits to most drone operators.

UPS plans to start using drones for small deliveries of health-care supplies in North Carolina on various hospital campuses, eventually working its way up to other consumer packages with longer range deliveries. While health-care consumers call it a major step in enhancing health- care services, the move has much bigger possibilities for the courier, with “no limits” on the scale of UPS’ new delivery method.

“It just gives us a lot of capabilities,” said David Abney, chairman and chief executive of UPS. “We’re going to move ahead quickly and expand rapidly. It’s not going to be a small operation.”

The first authorization given out to a private company from the FAA was to Alphabet Inc.’s Wing Aviation, though it was limited to a specific area around Blacksburg, Virginia. Other companies such as Uber Technologies and Amazon.com have also been pushing for approvals for drone delivery.

With UPS’ new certification, approval for different deliveries should be received faster and easier. If this turns out to be correct, the goal is to eventually have drone operators manage multiple drones for delivery at once, with a control center in which UPS will be able to monitor a whole fleet of drones from one location. Doing so would allow UPS to avoid collisions and gain data regarding flight paths and risks.

The company would begin drone deliveries by investing in pilot-training programs and ground- based technologies to better manage drone routes. Because the authorization received from the FAA does not include urban areas, however, UPS still faces big challenges.

Still, Daniel Elwell, deputy administrator of the FAA believes that there is a “creative fire in the industry” being lit as lessons are learned and drone delivery is tested through moves such as those with Wing and UPS. Initially, regulations and certification requirements were held up by an array of technical issues, but now, as Elwell said when giving proposals to review drone operation requirements, “The rule is moving.”

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