Interview with Flytrex Drone Delivery CEO, Yariv Bash

The Cana­di­an web­site, www.stattimes.com, pub­lished an inter­view with Yariv Bash, CEO of Fly­trex, this week (April 10th). Inter­viewed by jour­nal­ist Zinal Ded­hia, it is becom­ing clear that Tel Aviv-based Fly­trex is becom­ing a lead­ing con­tender with­in the drone deliv­ery indus­try along­side oth­ers like Zipline, Wing, Man­na, Drone­Up and Wing­copter.

Yariv Bash

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The com­pa­ny had a busy 2022 expand­ing its glob­al oper­a­tions. Present­ly, it is focus­ing oper­a­tions in the U.S where Fly­trex drones are busy in the skies above North Car­oli­na and Texas. Gen­er­al data here offers:-

: The aver­age time from take­off to deliv­ery was around 3.5 min­utes.

: On Octo­ber 14th, Fly­trex set a new record with one order per every five min­utes.

: Found­ed in 2017, the com­pa­ny had over 21,350 unique deliv­er­ies amount­ing to 85,000 prod­ucts along­side 4,000 unique users in 2022, a 765 per­cent increase over 2021.

: Sand­wich­es and sal­ads account­ed for over a fifth of all restau­rant orders (19.8 per­cent), with chick­en and wings com­ing in sec­ond at 18.5 per­cent.

: Accord­ing to the data, the largest order includ­ed three toma­to soups and one noo­dle soup, two Cobb sal­ads with chick­en, two BLTs, and three cheese sand­wich­es.

Present­ly, Fly­trex has five U.S drone hubs locat­ed across North Car­oli­na and Texas. These include Granbury (TX), Durham (NC), Hol­ly Springs (NC) and Fayet­teville (NC).

While not in the same deliv­ery league as Zipline or Wing, for exam­ple, Fly­trex is grow­ing at a rapid rate. Refer­ring to the indus­try, Bash says, “This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

Zinal Ded­hia

Focus­ing on the last six years, Ded­hia asks:-

What chal­lenges did you face dur­ing these years, and how did you over­come them?

Drones are held to the same safe­ty stan­dards as com­mer­cial avi­a­tion jets, so Fly­trex and oth­er com­pa­nies offer­ing sim­i­lar ser­vices are expect­ed to meet strin­gent safe­ty stan­dards. Fly­trex has been work­ing close­ly with reg­u­la­tors like the FAA to tack­le the chal­lenges of Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tem (UAS) inte­gra­tion, answer com­mu­ni­ty con­cerns, and prove that drones are a viable deliv­ery solu­tion.

Drone deliv­er­ies have recent­ly received more atten­tion than they did when you first began. What are your thoughts on this indus­try shift?

Inten­si­fied by the pan­dem­ic, ‘instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion’ is a pri­or­i­ty for con­sumers, espe­cial­ly once they expe­ri­ence air­borne deliv­er­ies straight to their back­yards with­in min­utes. The pan­dem­ic proved a test case for drone deliv­er­ies, demon­strat­ing both the need for such ser­vices as well as their via­bil­i­ty, and the accep­tance of such deliv­er­ies encour­aged their pro­lif­er­a­tion across new loca­tions.

In sub­ur­ban and rur­al areas, where tra­di­tion­al couri­ers can make around two deliv­er­ies per hour, on-demand deliv­ery has typ­i­cal­ly been seen as eco­nom­i­cal­ly imprac­ti­cal. With over 82 mil­lion house­holds liv­ing in detached sin­gle-fam­i­ly homes in the U.S. sub­urbs, this has remained a mas­sive under­served mar­ket for on-demand deliv­ery.

Shift­ing the on-demand par­a­digm, Fly­trex is specif­i­cal­ly designed for ‘ultra­fast on-demand drone deliv­ery direct­ly to con­sumers’ homes’, pro­vid­ing unique short-range, high-band­width and low-mar­gin last-mile ful­fil­ment – AKA a bet­ter, faster, and cheap­er ser­vice.

The Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) recent­ly approved Fly­trex for a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion that will allow for nation­wide long-range deliv­ery. Could you please elab­o­rate on your plans for expansion/business after receiv­ing the cer­tifi­cate?

Part 135 allows Fly­trex greater oper­a­tional flex­i­bil­i­ty, includ­ing the abil­i­ty to fly over peo­ple and beyond the pilot’s visu­al line of sight (BVLOS) — a lim­i­ta­tion that can’t be waived under Part 107. This mile­stone makes it pos­si­ble to serve a far wider range of cus­tomers per sta­tion. With this new approval, Fly­trex is now geared to con­tin­ue scal­ing drone deliv­ery nation­wide, to the tens of mil­lions of homes across sub­ur­ban Amer­i­ca – ensur­ing faster, cheap­er deliv­er­ies to eli­gi­ble cus­tomers.

What are your cus­tomers’ drone deliv­ery expec­ta­tions, and how do you intend to meet them? Are they look­ing for some­thing spe­cif­ic?

In gen­er­al, when it comes to deliv­ery, con­sumers across the US expect instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, qual­i­ty, and con­ve­nience at a rea­son­able price. Fly­trex is meet­ing these expec­ta­tions by pro­vid­ing fast and cheap deliv­ery for the con­sumer, and with an aver­age deliv­ery time of 3 min­utes and 32 sec­onds, cus­tomers are receiv­ing their din­ner still hot from the oven, or their ice cream still cold and fresh – mean­ing high­er qual­i­ty deliv­ery as well.

What are the restaurant/food out­let require­ments for using a drone to car­ry their food? Do they want to see a change in the way drones are designed?

For restau­rants, Fly­trex is just like any oth­er tra­di­tion­al on-demand ser­vice. If a restau­rant works with a third-par­ty deliv­ery ser­vice using human couri­ers, work­ing with Fly­trex is the same. Cus­tomers order food and goods via the Fly­trex app, the restau­rant pre­pares the order, and it is then packed into drones for ultra­fast deliv­ery. Fly­trex has it all, from ice cream to cof­fee to sushi.

Is there a prod­uct or food item that you haven’t yet deliv­ered but would like to?

We’re always look­ing to pro­vide the best ser­vice pos­si­ble to our cus­tomers. As long as they’re hap­py with their orders, so are we. And, like you said, we’re deliv­er­ing it all: if the store stocks it, (and it fits) we’ll fly it.

What changes do you intend to make in your deliv­er­ies over the next five years?

Our ongo­ing focus is to con­tin­ue expand­ing our ser­vice across the US sub­urbs. We also will con­tin­ue work­ing with reg­u­la­tors like the FAA to help tack­le the remain­ing chal­lenges of UAS inte­gra­tion.

Do you intend to expand your busi­ness beyond the Unit­ed States? If so, which poten­tial mar­ket and why?

At present, Fly­trex is focused on expand­ing its ser­vice with­in the US mar­ket. With tens of mil­lions of sub­ur­ban homes spread through­out the coun­try, Fly­trex is plac­ing its efforts on cater­ing to these indi­vid­u­als to ensure swift, afford­able deliv­ery is avail­able to all.

Unilever Part­ners with Fly­trex for Ice-Cream Deliv­ery

What changes do you think the indus­try needs to make as drone deliv­er­ies spread and become a part of our dai­ly lives? Do you believe that some changes to the reg­u­la­tions gov­ern­ing drone deliv­er­ies in the US are required?

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, Fly­trex is com­mit­ted to ensur­ing drones are inte­grat­ed into air­space safe­ly. This is why Fly­trex has been work­ing close­ly with reg­u­la­tors, hav­ing par­tic­i­pat­ed in FAA’s UAS Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gramme, which con­clud­ed in Octo­ber 2020, and con­tin­ued in the FAA’s sub­se­quent ini­tia­tive, BEYOND, work­ing with the North Car­oli­na Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion.

Although drone deliv­ery has pro­gressed by leaps and bounds, there is still a long tra­jec­to­ry ahead. The indus­try will need to advance drone tech­nol­o­gy to sup­port harsh­er and more volatile weath­er con­di­tions, as well as increase the vehi­cles’ pay­load and deliv­ery range.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the rise of drone ser­vices has under­scored the need for Unmanned Air­craft Sys­tem Traf­fic Man­age­ment (UTM). Flytrex’s tech­nol­o­gy can be inte­grat­ed with a wide range of UTM providers. The com­pa­ny is con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tor­ing UTM ser­vices stan­dard­iza­tion, which we believe will expe­dite the wide adop­tion of drone deliv­er­ies in a safe and effec­tive man­ner.

Last but not least: for drone deliv­ery to tru­ly pro­lif­er­ate, a robust detect and avoid sys­tem must be put in place. This enables the drones to safe­ly inte­grate into civil­ian air­space and avoid col­li­sions with oth­er air­craft, build­ings, birds, pow­er lines or oth­er obsta­cles – essen­tial­ly act­ing as eyes scan­ning the skies and nav­i­gat­ing through aer­i­al traf­fic.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.flytrex.com

(News Source: www.stattimes.com)

(images: Fly­trex)

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Yariv Bash talk­ing on the Drone Radio Show Pod­cast this week, host­ed by Randy Goers.

(cred­it: dronelife.com)

Fly­trex on the Drone Radio Show Pod­cast! 135 Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, and Scal­ing Drone Deliv­ery