All Nippon Airways and Wingcopter partner to build eVTOL drone delivery network in Japan

Wing­copter and ANA Hold­ings — the par­ent com­pa­ny of All Nip­pon Air­ways — are work­ing togeth­er to accel­er­ate the deliv­ery of vital phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and oth­er con­sumer prod­ucts via unmanned air­craft in Japan.

The two com­pa­nies are con­duct­ing com­pre­hen­sive tri­als with fixed-wing eVTOL air­craft devel­oped by Wing­copter, with the aim of build­ing a drone deliv­ery net­work capa­ble of serv­ing needs across the coun­try.

The first phase of the cur­rent tests took place from March 21st-26th, with the super­vised flight of a Wing­copter air­craft between Fukue­ji­ma and Hisaka­ji­ma in Goto City, Nagasa­ki Pre­fec­ture.

The flights demon­strat­ed the via­bil­i­ty of drone deliv­ery for med­ical sup­plies, dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduc­ing patients’ wait­ing times. In this remote region of Japan, it is dif­fi­cult to quick­ly trans­port med­ical sup­plies due to poor infra­struc­ture. This has cre­at­ed prob­lems for pub­lic health offi­cials and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als look­ing to rapid­ly respond in sit­u­a­tions, where time is a key fac­tor in treat­ment.

The ongo­ing tri­als will help ANA deter­mine which air­craft are suit­ed to oper­ate best in each region of the coun­try, eval­u­at­ing local weath­er con­di­tions and demand for drone deliv­ery, as it estab­lish­es a series of hubs along the trans­porta­tion net­work.

Tet­suya Kubo, Vice Pres­i­dent of ANA over­see­ing the Dig­i­tal Design Lab, said: “The ongo­ing tests of Wing­copter air­craft rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant step for­ward in the cre­ation of a viable drone trans­porta­tion net­work. We are excit­ed to part­ner with Wing­copter as we build on the advances and inno­va­tion of pre­vi­ous tri­als to bring drone deliv­ery one step clos­er to real­i­ty. Once ful­ly realised, a func­tion­ing drone trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture will help improve qual­i­ty of life in rur­al areas across Japan.”

In 2016, ANA began to lay the frame­work for its drone trans­porta­tion infra­struc­ture with the aim of ful­ly com­mer­cial­is­ing drone deliv­ery ser­vices by 2022. Drone deliv­ery tri­als have been con­duct­ed in Japan since 2018, and the first flights with Wing­copter air­craft took place in 2019.

ANA is pro­vid­ing insights gained from decades of avi­a­tion expe­ri­ence in the coun­try, in full com­pli­ance with local avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions. While Wing­copter is pro­vid­ing sup­port in terms of train­ing of pilots, mis­sion plan­ning, oper­a­tion design and main­te­nance.

For Wing­copter, the part­ner­ship with ANA is the first major step in its quest to expand in the Japan­ese mar­ket. The com­pa­ny recent­ly opened its own rep­re­sen­ta­tive office in Japan, offer­ing solu­tions in com­mer­cial drone deliv­ery. 

As Wingcopter’s fixed-wing eVTOL air­craft can fly for longer dis­tances and more rapid­ly than oth­er unmanned air­craft, they rep­re­sent a use­ful alter­na­tive to over­land deliv­ery in many regions. In 2020, Wing­copter was award­ed the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals Spot­light Prize at NTT DATA’s Open Inno­va­tion Chal­lenge in Tokyo.

“Being able to help a glob­al com­pa­ny like ANA open up new busi­ness areas and at the same time pur­sue our mis­sion to save and improve lives, is what we tire­less­ly work for,“ adds Tom Plüm­mer, CEO of Wing­copter. “We are real­ly look­ing for­ward to the next steps and the over­all part­ner­ship with ANA in Japan and beyond.”

As well as Japan, ANA signed an Mem­o­ran­dum of Under­stand­ing with Zam­bian Gov­ern­ment in 2019 to con­duct sim­i­lar field tests with drones to improve the deliv­ery of med­ical sup­plies in the coun­try.