Flock insures Wingcopter drones in BVLOS trial for NHS led by Skyports

Flock has sup­port­ed drone deliv­ery provider Sky­ports dur­ing a two-week tri­al to trans­port urgent med­ical car­go to remote com­mu­ni­ties in Scot­land.

Backed by Argyll and Bute Health and Social Care Part­ner­ship — part of NHS High­land, the com­pa­ny insured drones man­u­fac­tured by Wing­copter, which con­duct­ed flights at the end of May. The route was between two hos­pi­tals, tak­ing off in Oban before fly­ing 10 miles away to the Isle of Mull.

The goal was to cut deliv­ery times from six hours one-way via fer­ry, to just 15 min­utes on-demand by drone, demon­strat­ing the fea­si­bil­i­ty of trans­port­ing COVID-19 test kits and Per­son­al Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment (PPE), between remote med­ical facil­i­ties by deliv­ery drone.

Flock’s CEO, Ed Leon Klinger, said: “A few years ago drone deliv­er­ies were no more than sci­ence fic­tion. Today they’re tak­ing place around the world, help­ing to trans­port crit­i­cal equip­ment like PPE and med­ica­tion.

“Sky­ports is pio­neers in the space and it’s very excit­ing to have helped unlock the crit­i­cal insur­ance need­ed for these flights to take place. We’re delight­ed to pro­vide sup­port for the tri­als through our very own COVID-19 fund which was designed for exact­ly this kind of excep­tion­al oper­a­tion.

“Flock is rapid­ly becom­ing known as the go-to insur­er for drone deliv­er­ies due to our in-depth knowl­edge of the indus­try, a ful­ly flex­i­ble approach to insur­ance, and key rela­tion­ships with under­writ­ers, such as Allianz who worked with us to sup­port this tri­al.”

The two-week tri­al rep­re­sents a key mile­stone for unmanned avi­a­tion in the UK. Under cur­rent rules, drones must be flown with­in visu­al line of sight of the remote pilot. To under­take these extend­ed flights, the project team have worked close­ly with the UK’s Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA).

Flock’s own col­lab­o­ra­tion with indus­try bod­ies and data-dri­ven approach to insur­ance makes it one of the only insur­ers capa­ble of under­stand­ing the chal­lenges asso­ci­at­ed with Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) flights around the world.

The tri­al flights will be planned through Thales’ lead­ing drone oper­a­tions man­age­ment plat­form, SOARIZON, which offers dig­i­tal tools to main­tain com­pli­ant and safe drone fly­ing oper­a­tions.

Alex Brown, Head of Oper­a­tions at Sky­ports, added: “Flock nev­er cease to amaze us with their speed, flex­i­bil­i­ty and abil­i­ty to go above and beyond to sup­port their cus­tomers. The major­i­ty of insur­ance providers out there wouldn’t know where to start with a com­plex oper­a­tion like this, but for Flock, it’s their bread and but­ter.

“We’re delight­ed to have an insur­ance part­ner that helps us push the enve­lope of what’s pos­si­ble whilst keep­ing safe­ty at the heart of every­thing they do.

Klinger added: “These med­ical deliv­ery tri­als are an indi­ca­tion of the future we’re work­ing towards. As Gov­ern­ments and pub­lic bod­ies realise the trans­for­ma­tion­al impact of drones, Flock remains ready and able to lend its exper­tise.”