Speedbird Aero and iFood Launch New Drone Delivery Route in São Paulo, Brazil

Speed­bird Aero has announced the launch of a new drone deliv­ery route in Greater São Paulo, Brazil.

Start­ing on June 1st in Alphav­ille, the ser­vice will fea­ture a mul­ti­modal oper­a­tion that inte­grates in-mall pick­up, air trans­port car­ried out by a Speed­bird air­craft and final deliv­ery by part­ner rid­ers.

The new route was designed to address a con­crete urban logis­tics chal­lenge: areas with com­plex access, long wait times, and high rejec­tion rates among deliv­ery rid­ers. In the Barueri oper­a­tion specif­i­cal­ly, the served route record­ed near­ly 50 per cent order rejec­tion, due to access dif­fi­cul­ties and the time involved in deliv­er­ing to large res­i­den­tial com­plex­es.

With the Speed­bird air­craft, the 3.6‑kilometer aer­i­al stretch is now com­plet­ed in approx­i­mate­ly five min­utes, reduc­ing oper­a­tional bot­tle­necks and expand­ing ser­vice via­bil­i­ty for restau­rants, con­sumers, and deliv­ery rid­ers.

Manoel Coel­ho, CEO and co-founder of Speed­bird Aero, said: “Oper­a­tions like this show that drone deliv­ery has moved beyond the exper­i­men­tal stage and is begin­ning to play a real role with­in com­plex logis­tics sys­tems. Our focus is on ensur­ing this tech­nol­o­gy is applied safe­ly, effi­cient­ly, and inte­grat­ed with the exist­ing ecosys­tem, cre­at­ing new pos­si­bil­i­ties for plat­forms, restau­rants, and con­sumers.”

The flow begins at Shop­ping Iguate­mi Alphav­ille, where the order is picked up inter­nal­ly by a couri­er or by Ada, iFood’s autonomous robot. The order is then trans­port­ed by the Speed­bird air­craft along the aer­i­al seg­ment, and final­ly deliv­ered by motor­cy­cle to the end con­sumer.

For Speed­bird Aero, this ini­tia­tive rep­re­sents a fur­ther step in estab­lish­ing drones as com­ple­men­tary infra­struc­ture for urban logis­tics. The com­pa­ny is respon­si­ble for the air­craft, onboard tech­nol­o­gy, and flight con­trol as well as mon­i­tor­ing from its con­trol cen­ter in Fran­ca, in upstate São Paulo.

The air­craft uti­lized in the oper­a­tion was devel­oped by Speed­bird Aero and has been inte­grat­ed into iFood’s Sergipe oper­a­tions since its launch last year. It has a pay­load capac­i­ty of up to 5 kg, flies at up to 50 km/h, and oper­ates at alti­tudes of up to 60 meters. The mod­el fea­tures GPS, an emer­gency para­chute, and was designed to oper­ate safe­ly under var­i­ous con­di­tions, includ­ing winds of up to 55 km/h and light rain.

Each route holds the nec­es­sary autho­riza­tions from Brazil’s Nation­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Agency (ANAC) and the Depart­ment of Air­space Con­trol (DECEA). Every flight path is con­trolled and mon­i­tored by Speed­bird with ded­i­cat­ed real-time over­sight, ensur­ing safe­op­er­a­tions inte­grat­ed into Greater São Paulo’s air­space.

The new Alphav­ille oper­a­tion con­tin­ues the tech­no­log­i­cal progress already demon­strat­ed in Sergipe, where the aer­i­al route con­nect­ing a shop­ping mall in Ara­ca­ju to res­i­dents of Bar­ra dos Coqueiros has sur­passed 5,000 orders since Octo­ber, aver­ag­ing 800 deliv­er­ies per month.

In the Sergipe oper­a­tion, a ground jour­ney of approx­i­mate­ly 36 kilo­me­ters — which could take around one hour — was trans­formed into a flight of under four kilo­me­ters com­plet­ed in just a few min­utes, with the final leg also han­dled by deliv­ery rid­ers.

Beyond reduc­ing trav­el times, the mod­el has the poten­tial to unlock new ser­vice areas, boost demand for restau­rants, and make pre­vi­ous­ly unpro­duc­tive or nonex­is­tent routes viable with­in tra­di­tion­al deliv­ery net­works.

Speed­bird Aero is a Brazil­ian drone logis­tics pio­neer spe­cial­ized in the devel­op­ment and oper­a­tion of autonomous air­craft for safe, cer­ti­fied and scal­able mis­sions. With more than 40,000 com­mer­cial mis­sions across 14 coun­tries, the com­pa­ny oper­ates as both an OEM and an oper­a­tor in Brazil and Europe, with autonomous air sys­tems enabled for BVLOS, or Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight, oper­a­tions.

Tech­ni­cal Data

● Air­craft: devel­oped and oper­at­ed by Speed­bird Aero
● Pay­load capac­i­ty: up to 5 kg (food orders only at this stage)
● Speed: up to 50 km/h
● Alti­tude: up to 60 meters
● Aer­i­al seg­ment: 3.6 km, com­plet­ed in approx­i­mate­ly five min­utes
● Safe­ty fea­tures: GPS, emer­gency para­chute, and remote mon­i­tor­ing
● Oper­a­tions: Speed­bird Aero con­trol cen­ter in Fran­ca, São Paulo
● Fleet: two drones avail­able per route, dis­patched on demand
● Weath­er resis­tance: oper­a­tion in winds up to 55 km/h and light rain up to 5
mm/hour