Skyports Drone Services announces Speedbird Aero as new aircraft partner for Orkney I‑Port

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices has today announced Speed­bird Aero as new air­craft part­ner for the Orkney I‑Port oper­a­tion, a drone deliv­ery project estab­lished in part­ner­ship with Roy­al Mail, Orkney Islands Coun­cil Har­bour Author­i­ty and Loganair.

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices will pro­vide its DLV‑2 air­craft for its glob­al deliv­ery and logis­tics projects, start­ing with three months of inter-island deliv­ery flights for Roy­al Mail. First deliv­er­ies were com­plet­ed in July this year and will con­tin­ue until Octo­ber.

The elec­tric mul­ti­ro­tor DLV‑2 drone, which has a pay­load capac­i­ty of 6kg and a range of up to 16 km, was select­ed as vehi­cle of choice for the Orkney I‑Port project due to its large pay­load vol­ume, which makes it well suit­ed to car­ry­ing car­go such as Roy­al Mail parcels.

The air­craft is also equipped with a para­chute. The weath­er and geog­ra­phy of Orkney impacts the abil­i­ty for Roy­al Mail to pro­vide an unin­ter­rupt­ed deliv­ery ser­vice for its res­i­dents, and paus­es in the fer­ry sched­ule by which some mail is trans­port­ed are com­mon dur­ing poor weath­er due to the chal­lenges of dock­ing safe­ly.

The DLV‑2 air­craft has been select­ed due to its abil­i­ty to fly in weath­er con­di­tions that exceed the upper lim­its of the Orkney inter-island fer­ry. The Speed­bird DLV‑2 is the lat­est air­craft to be board­ed by Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, fol­low­ing Pyka Pel­i­can Car­go ear­li­er this year.

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices part­ners with Pyka to launch heavy car­go oper­a­tions

Alex Brown, Direc­tor, Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, said: “Our approach to fleet devel­op­ment is to onboard a select num­ber of vehi­cle providers that can match mar­ket growth, scale with us and meet the require­ments of the loca­tions in which we oper­ate.

“Speed­bird is an exam­ple of the type of man­u­fac­tur­er we love to work with; the company’s com­mit­ment to qual­i­ty, safe­ty and inno­va­tion make it best-in-class and an excel­lent addi­tion to our fleet. The Orkney I‑Port project, with its renowned project part­ners and objec­tive of improv­ing com­mu­ni­ty access with drones, is a great place to kick off the part­ner­ship.”

Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices to launch Orkney drone deliv­ery flights for Roy­al Mail

Speed­bird Aero CEO Manoel Coel­ho added: “Togeth­er with Sky­ports Drone Ser­vices, we will bring unri­valled effi­cien­cy to every drone logis­tics project we under­take. Our focus on sus­tain­abil­i­ty and inno­va­tion will pave the way for a green­er and more con­nect­ed future.”