A2Z Chosen As Partner for Commercial Drone Delivery Trials in Indonesia

A2Z Drone Deliv­ery has been select­ed as the tech­nol­o­gy part­ner for a beyond-visu­al-line-of-sight (BVLOS) drone deliv­ery pilot in Bali, Indone­sia, with the tri­al test­ing food deliv­er­ies between Café del Mar Bali and Nuanu Cre­ative City.

The pilot is being con­duct­ed by com­mer­cial drone ser­vices provider SKYY Net­work in part­ner­ship with Grab Indone­sia. A2Z is sup­ply­ing its Long­tail Dual deliv­ery drone and Air­Dock autonomous charg­ing infra­struc­ture for the pro­gramme.

The tri­al is intend­ed to assess how drone deliv­er­ies can be inte­grat­ed with exist­ing ground-based logis­tics. Cus­tomers can place food orders through Grab, with SKYY Net­work oper­at­ing the drone flights to deliv­er orders to Nuanu Cre­ative City.

The oper­a­tion is the first BVLOS food deliv­ery tri­al in Indone­sia, accord­ing to A2Z, and is being con­duct­ed under a cer­tifi­cate issued by Indonesia’s Direc­torate Gen­er­al of Civ­il Avi­a­tion. The pro­gramme has under­gone a Spe­cif­ic Oper­a­tions Risk Assess­ment (SORA), which is used to eval­u­ate risks asso­ci­at­ed with com­mer­cial drone oper­a­tions.

The route oper­ates in con­trolled air­space asso­ci­at­ed with Bali’s Ngu­rah Rai Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and includes flights over pop­u­lat­ed areas. The part­ners are also assess­ing the impact of local ter­rain, weath­er con­di­tions and inter­mit­tent cel­lu­lar con­nec­tiv­i­ty on drone oper­a­tions.

A2Z’s Long­tail Dual was select­ed for the tri­al, with the com­pa­ny cit­ing its dual-bat­tery archi­tec­ture and abil­i­ty to main­tain flight con­trol using a sin­gle bat­tery in the event of a pow­er-sys­tem fail­ure. The air­craft is sup­port­ed by A2Z Air­Docks, which pro­vide auto­mat­ed launch, recov­ery and charg­ing between mis­sions.

The part­ners said the pilot is intend­ed to gen­er­ate oper­a­tional data on infra­struc­ture require­ments, safe­ty, cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and the inte­gra­tion of drone deliv­er­ies with exist­ing logis­tics ser­vices. Grab said the drone oper­a­tion is being eval­u­at­ed as a com­ple­ment to its exist­ing deliv­ery net­work rather than a replace­ment for its dri­ver part­ners.

Aaron Zhang, CEO of A2Z Drone Deliv­ery, said that “The oper­a­tional envi­ron­ment for this project is par­tic­u­lar­ly chal­leng­ing, with high winds being a con­stant chal­lenge, a com­plex shared air­space that needs to be safe­ly nav­i­gat­ed, and flights oper­at­ing over pop­u­lat­ed areas. Demon­strat­ing that drone deliv­ery can ful­fill these mis­sions safe­ly and con­sis­tent­ly will be a sol­id proof for the scal­a­bil­i­ty of drone ser­vices through­out Indone­sia.”

A2Z also sees the Air­Dock infra­struc­ture as a poten­tial basis for expand­ing drone oper­a­tions beyond food deliv­ery. The com­pa­ny said the same infra­struc­ture could even­tu­al­ly sup­port appli­ca­tions includ­ing emer­gency response, off­shore logis­tics, port oper­a­tions and inspec­tion ser­vices.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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