Wing, DoorDash take drone delivery into Melbourne

Two years after they shook hands on a partnership deal that saw delivery drone maker and services provider Wing’s drones being introduced as a home delivery choice for orders from online food retailer DoorDash in the city of Logan in South East Queensland in Australia, the two companies are expanding the service into Melbourne.

In a statement, Wing said it was high time the company took its five years’ worth of experience into one of the best food scenes in the world.

“(Melbourne) is the food delivery capital of Australia, and starting (last week), is the largest metro area in Australia where Wing drone delivery is available,” the drone company said.

“Wing is expanding into greater Melbourne, bringing more than five years of commercial delivery experience in Australia to the state of Victoria.”

The two parties did not want to waste more time soon after obtaining the necessary regulatory approval from the Australian aviation authorities; which approval gives them the greenlight to introduce drone deliveries for convenience and grocery items, pantry staples, snacks, and household essentials ordered via the DoorDash app.

The first operations command centre will be located at QIC’s Eastland Shopping Centre in Maroondah, an area which will give over 250,000 Melbourne-area residents within the delivery service’s sphere of influence access to drone delivery via the DoorDash app.

“This expansion marks significant growth into major metro cities, allowing for hundreds of thousands more people, and dozens of new merchants, to have access to drone delivery in Australia through DoorDash.”

In due course, the aim is for the deliveries to cover the whole of the Melbourne metropolitan area.

“Our approved delivery area covering Melbourne is our largest in Australia to date, as is the pilot-to-aircraft ratio which governs our highly automated operations,” Wing added.

Flashback: Wing’s automated operations are conducted and controlled from a remote operating centre, and in previous times, each pilot was assigned to oversee around fifteen flights in the air at one time.

That number has since been increased to fifty.

“These changes allow a single pilot to oversee up to 50 drones in the air at any given time, an increase of over three times our prior approvals. This increase was achieved by demonstrating the safety of our aircraft, our system, and our operations, while delivering directly to homes over the past five years in Australia.”

Wing and DoorDash started working together in November 2022, through a partnership agreement that saw Wing introducing its delivery service via a third-party app for the first time.

The two then took their partnership to the US market, where they introduced a delivery pilot project in Christianburg, Virginia.

Customers can place their order through the DoorDash Air store in the app, selecting Drone Delivery when prompted, and within fifteen minutes, their purchase will be delivered by drone.

Wing drones can carry a payload of just over a kilogramme, and travel at a speed of around 110km/h.

However, with Wing’s partnership with the bigger companies growing, there have been complains among smaller businesses in Australia, who feel the Alphabet company just used them for proof-of-concept purposes before ditching them for bigger fish.

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