Wing collaborate with Walgreen for drone delivery in the United States
Wing unveils a new drone delivery model in densely-populated metropolitan areas of the Unite States. Wing partners with Walgreens, the first U.S. retailer to use this new approach, ready to fly directly to customers. Walgreens team members will process orders and load packages onto the delivery drones, and Wing will oversee operation of the delivery service.
The aircraft will arrive in small containers that serve as tiny hangars, allowing each store to quickly and easily deploy a small, dedicated fleet from its parking lot, on its roof, or in small spaces adjacent to the building.
“Our first lightweight, co-located operation will be set up at a Dallas-Fort Worth area Walgreens store in its parking lot, serving parts of the city of Frisco and town of Little Elm,” stated the Wing’s official release.
In addition to the Walgreens store, Wing has teamed up with Hillwood to prepare a separate drone delivery facility within Frisco Station, an urban, mixed-used development located in Frisco. The aim is to explore to new use cases, community demonstrations, school field trips and public tours.
Until now, this type of service in the United States has been limited to smaller towns, where land usage is less crowded and complex. Wing’s aircraft and flight planning and routing capabilities make it uniquely capable of operating a highly automated drone delivery service in more crowded, complex operating environments.
In preparation for this launch, Wing has been conducting test flights since June at Hillwood’s AllianceTexas Flight Test Center, a drone testing facility in Fort Worth. “We’ll begin a small number of practice flights next week in Frisco and Little Elm, and hope to set up delivery demonstrations to get feedback from the community in the coming weeks. In the coming months, we expect to launch a commercial service there that would be the first of its kind in a major U.S. metro,” the release said.
Current Issue - October 2021
