Latest Update: Wing Drone Delivery Comes to Ireland

More details are emerg­ing about Wing’s drone deliv­ery for­ay into Ire­land, after news broke late last week that the U.S‑based com­pa­ny plans to com­pete with Man­na Aero in the Dublin area.

Dur­ing the com­ing weeks, Wing will launch a small-scale demon­stra­tion of a drone deliv­ery oper­a­tion in Lusk, an Irish com­mu­ni­ty in Fin­gal, Coun­ty Dublin, 12 miles north of Dublin city. These oper­a­tions come off the back of suc­cess­ful part­ner­ships and approvals that were grant­ed to the com­pa­ny in Fin­land and are recog­nised across EASA Mem­ber States as well as the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty.

Wing Drone Deliv­ery Mov­ing in on Ire­land and “Bob­by Healy’s Manor”

Mar­garet Nagle, Wing’s Head of Pol­i­cy, Reg­u­la­to­ry and Com­mu­ni­ty Affairs, writes on the Wing blog, “Ire­land has been a wel­come home for drone tech­nol­o­gy in Europe and a great incu­ba­tor for future inno­va­tions. The goal of this pro­gram is to expand our Euro­pean oper­a­tions into Ire­land, gain expe­ri­ence oper­at­ing there, and begin the process of learn­ing from the local com­mu­ni­ty about the types of drone deliv­ery ser­vices that would bring them the most val­ue.”

She adds, “To be clear, this is a first small step for Wing in Ire­land, and will look dif­fer­ent from the com­mer­cial ser­vices we now oper­ate in Fin­land, Aus­tralia and the Unit­ed States.”

The com­pa­ny has already had pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions with local lead­ers and is look­ing for­ward to “deep­er con­sul­ta­tion over the com­ing days.” Wing is host­ing a pub­lic com­mu­ni­ty meet­ing at Lusk Com­mu­ni­ty Cul­tur­al Cen­tre on Thurs­day, Oct 27th from 4pm to 8pm. The pub­lic will be encour­aged to ask ques­tions, while gain­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty to view the drones up close before they begin fly­ing. This will be the first of many out­reach events lead­ing up to the ser­vice launch. 

Wing chose Ire­land because of the sup­port and expe­ri­ence of the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty and the open­ness of the Irish com­mu­ni­ties to drone deliv­ery tech­nol­o­gy, after the suc­cess­ful tri­als car­ried out by Man­na Aero.

Ear­li­er this month, Wing com­plet­ed its 300,000th drone deliv­ery pri­mar­i­ly in Amer­i­ca and Aus­tralia.

Com­ment

It had to hap­pen. Man­na Aero does all the mar­ket research and hard work in Ire­land and then a com­peti­tor jumps on-board in direct com­pe­ti­tion. Thank you very much. Is Wing a seri­ous threat to Bob­by Healy’s com­pa­ny, the cuck­oo with­in his drone deliv­ery nest? It is way too soon to tell.

The U.S com­pa­ny has its own prob­lems, espe­cial­ly with craft noise. It is inter­est­ing that this press release arrived with an 8’ minute video of a fly­ing Wing drone, yet all sound has been mut­ed. We know the com­pa­ny is sen­si­tive about its noise prob­lem and espe­cial­ly con­cerned after the recent public’s crit­i­cism in Bris­bane of “the mos­qui­to-type whine”, even after the com­pa­ny had decreased the noise lev­el by almost 50 per­cent the pre­vi­ous year.

Could this become “the bat­tle of the deci­bel” between Man­na and Wing? It is unclear who wins, at present. Yet a whine remains a whine at what­ev­er low lev­el. Sure­ly, the sound of a wispy wind is far more nat­ur­al?

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wing.com

(Pics: Wing)