Welcome to the drone zone

In recent weeks, the FAA granted three US companies final authorization to fly unmanned drone aircraft where their operators can’t see them (instead of requiring a continuous line of sight).

FAA officials say they selected the three companies in question – UPS Flight Forward, Phoenix Air Unmanned, and uAvionix – because each applied for different use cases:

• UPS Flight Forward aims to deliver packages in urban and suburban environments using its Matternet drones, which can carry payloads weighing up to 4.4 lbs over distances of up to 12.4 miles.
• Phoenix Air Unmanned, an infrastructure inspection company, will use drones to patrol power lines and pipelines and look for areas in need of repair.
• uAvionix is testing its next-gen software designed to detect and avoid other drones and aircraft.

🚁 Big picture: The drone delivery market is like a hormone-filled teenager – nascent, and just starting to develop. Other major companies with FAA approval to fly drones beyond the line of sight of operators include Zipline, Alphabet’s Wing, and FedEx, which have collectively completed tens of thousands of drone deliveries to US homes since 2019.

But not all drone delivery programs have experienced a smooth flight. Amazon’s Prime Air, which the company projected would deliver 10,000 packages via drone by the end of this year, had only made 100 deliveries as of May (the most recent month with available data).