Do City Delivery Drones Make Sense? No One Knows, But They Fly Through NYC

It’s a bird, it’s an airplane, a six-propeller flying vehicle with a wingspan of about eight feet.

The following year, delivery drones operated by British company Skyports made daily weekday trips across the East River in New York City, between the tip of Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the beginning of May – slightly behind schedule – drones have carried a small amount of equipment for the health care system of New York City. Currently, those loads are a few kilos of paper; if the health care system is confident that the setup works, it should include safe, non-biological packages, such as simple medicines.

The drones are part of a study by two New York-New Jersey agencies to determine how new and sometimes controversial aerial delivery technologies can fit into busy urban areas—and the air space above them. The pilot program will also try to answer the question hanging over the entire drone delivery industry: Where does it make sense?

“Will there be enough regular flights (1 to 2 per hour) for the client’s health care plan to get real value?” Stephan Pezdek, regional manager of logistics at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is running the pilot, wrote in an email to WIRED. (The Port Authority declined to name the health care plan for contractual reasons.) “Will the deliveries get to their destinations quickly and under the financial constraints of the carriers they use? Will the public enjoy the work and not feel like it’s an inconvenience? All of this will inform our understanding of how the first tunnel takes shape.”

The Port Authority, which is also working with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCDEC) on the drone project, will also measure how the delivery affects patient care, Pezdek said.

Globally, drone delivery is still in the experimental phase. What projects there are are mainly focused on carrying goods in rural or urban areas, where gaps in the road network and services, and empty skies, would make the technology a better fit. Skyports has been delivering mail to remote areas of Scotland since 2023, and carrying cargo to offshore wind turbines in Germany. US company Zipline says it delivers to and from about 5,000 health facilities on four continents; its oldest program brings vaccines and blood products to Rwanda. In the US, companies including Alphabet’s Wing and Amazon’s Prime Air are working to expand delivery services across the South, with a focus on the suburbs around Houston, Austin, and Dallas, Texas.

For drones, dense cities present different challenges. First, there is the question of safety. New York City’s airspace is packed, with three international airports. In Manhattan alone, there are three publicly owned helipads. By May 2023, nearly 9,000 helicopter flights took place on city land or water, according to data compiled by the New York City Council. The start date for the drone test program was pushed back in part because another aircraft technology being tested, the electric vertical and landing vehicle (eVTOL), was showing its first flights of its kind from the same heliport.

That said chaos leads to additional security measures. The pilot project, as usual, was approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which requires a certified drone pilot to oversee every flight. Each flight will take place on an unmodified route away from residential buildings. The project must receive weekly approval from the NYPD to operate, and delays in getting the first one also led the city to push back the start date, said Amanda Kwan, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority. The agency also spoke to three local community boards before allowing the drones to take off.