Two Octogenarians Break World Record for Wing Drone Deliveries

The media ‘sil­ly sea­son’ is August, where apart from Loch Ness Mon­ster sight­ings and sto­ries about Big­foot, occa­sion­al­ly a real gem emerges to warm the cock­les of your heart. 

U.S‑based Wing drone deliv­ery released last week an absolute crack­er­jack which fea­tures two mar­ried octo­ge­nar­i­ans who live in Chris­tians­burg, Vir­ginia. They “absolute­ly love” the deliv­ery ser­vice, which is a part of their dai­ly habit. The cou­ple hold the world record for the most num­ber of Wing drone home deliv­er­ies, now close to 1,200.

Susie and Paul Sens­meier, 84 and 83 years-old respec­tive­ly, say drone deliv­ery has been “a life-saver… lit­er­al­ly.” Susie has vision issues, a recent bad knee and no longer dri­ves. While Paul does still use a car, drone deliv­ery has helped him skip unnec­es­sary trips. The cou­ple even said the ser­vice has assist­ed them to stay in their home longer than they may have oth­er­wise.”

While orders have been across the prod­uct board from play­ing cards and coloured pen­cils to tooth­paste, sun­screen and Covid-19 test kits, food, drink and take-away meals have been way and above their most pop­u­lar item.

The most-ordered items include:-

: 371 hot meals from a local Mex­i­can restau­rant.
: 210 blue­ber­ry muffins from a local bak­ery.
: 107 bot­tles of orange juice.
: 93 box­es of Girl Scout Cook­ies from a local chap­ter.

The aver­age deliv­ery time of each order has tak­en 12 min­utes and 14 sec­onds.

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On the back of this sto­ry, Wing also announced last week a new health­care deliv­ery col­lab­o­ra­tion with Api­an in Ire­land. The com­pa­ny expects to begin work­ing with hos­pi­tals and oth­er care providers in Dublin lat­er this year.

Over the com­ing months, Wing and Api­an are to col­lab­o­rate deliv­er­ing health­care for phar­ma­cy part­ners to cre­ate a fast med­ical flight trans­port net­work in South Dublin. This oper­a­tion is Wing’s sec­ond in Ire­land, fol­low­ing the pub­lic demon­stra­tion ser­vices in the small town of Lusk, 12 miles north of the city.

This led to Irish news web­site www.independent.ie, inter­view­ing Wing’s Chief Finan­cial Offi­cer, Ms Shan­non Nash, who explained, “If I was going to take out my crys­tal ball, I’d say we’re look­ing at mil­lions of deliv­er­ies in the next year to two.”

Nash then points out why South Dublin was cho­sen for the col­lab­o­ra­tion with Api­an. “Dublin real­ly kind of ticked all of the box­es. We worked with Api­an to find the most rela­tion­ships in terms of dif­fer­ent hos­pi­tals and med­ical organ­i­sa­tions and com­pa­nies in an urban envi­ron­ment where we could fly in and real­ly get the most out of this.

“But we have also been very for­tu­nate to work with the reg­u­la­tors in Ire­land, who have been very col­lab­o­ra­tive. Ire­land is a great envi­ron­ment for drone deliv­ery. The Irish reg­u­la­tors have been very for­ward think­ing about work­ing with com­pa­nies like ours.”

Shan­non Nash

While some may see Wing muscling in on Man­na Drone Deliv­ery’s grow­ing busi­ness, focus­ing more on health­care is a sen­si­ble step giv­en Man­na is strongest at deliv­er­ing food and relat­ed prod­ucts. Api­an is a good part­ner too, as the com­pa­ny has expe­ri­ence trans­port­ing items such as chemother­a­py drugs, blood sam­ples, pre­scrip­tions and med­ical equip­ment between hos­pi­tals, phar­ma­cies and care cen­tres. The spe­cif­ic hos­pi­tals, phar­ma­cies or med­ical providers haven’t yet been named as both Wing and Api­an drum up inter­est.

Also, Wing believes the health­care mar­ket is more prof­itable. Nash points out, “While peo­ple like get­ting cof­fee [via drones], being able to get antibi­otics or some­thing for a sick baby is some­thing else. Right now, [deliv­er­ies] are being done by a car and a per­son in a car.

“The com­par­a­tive cost of using an autonomous drone that weighs 11 pounds [5kg] is always going to be cheap­er than using the car and the per­son. But also it’s speed. We hear from providers about how long it takes to get that much need­ed sup­ply from a phar­ma­cy to a hos­pi­tal or from one hos­pi­tal loca­tion to anoth­er.”

The drones to be used are the same ones employed for its months-long con­sumer tri­al in Lusk last year. They fly at a height of about 100 metres, at close to 100kph, for under 5km per trip.

Although, it means no night-fly­ing and there won’t be any of Wing’s new Autoloader ter­mi­nals, which allow for quick­er, more accu­rate pick­ups, as part of the roll­out. Nash also wouldn’t say how many flights would be part of the new ser­vice.

But the reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment has moved to the point now where Wing, like Man­na, can start pro­gress­ing beyond line-of-sight mon­i­tor­ing from sup­port staff, mean­ing cheap­er per­son­nel costs.

Nash con­tin­ues: “This is a new indus­try. When­ev­er you’re doing some­thing ground­break­ing, there will be peo­ple who think that it’s going too fast and oth­ers who think it’s not going fast enough. We spend months and months work­ing with var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ty groups. From there, you get a pletho­ra of learn­ings that go into your next scale thing.”

Wing is one of the world’s biggest, and longest-run­ning inter­na­tion­al drone deliv­ery ser­vices. It has com­plet­ed over 350,000 flights, most­ly in Aus­tralia and the US. Wing will be oper­at­ing a com­mand cen­tre in Dublin to over­see the flights and any tech­ni­cal issues that arise.

Giv­en the size of the Irish mar­ket com­pared to the British one, it is like­ly the UK is the big­ger tar­get for Google’s sis­ter com­pa­ny. Yet, as the independent.ie points out, the Wing deploy­ment, togeth­er with increas­ing­ly big­ger tri­als from Man­na, means that Ire­land has tak­en anoth­er step in becom­ing one of the cen­tres of drone deliv­ery in Europe.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://wing.com/

(News Source: www.independent.ie)