• Flying deliveries of pizzas and birthday gifts have not yet become the standard.
• Several providers already have operations going or will by the end of the year.
• Amazon’s drone ambitions faltered last year after an accident during a test caused a brush fire.

As drone deliveries became a reality in the United States, a little aircraft came out of the blue sky over a Texas residence, delivered a midmorning snack in the yard, and zipped away.

As expected by IT executives, flying pizzas and birthday gift deliveries have not yet become the standard. Still, the service is available in parts of the United States, and government regulation is catching up.

The viability of drone deliveries on a broad scale is questioned by skeptics. At the same time, proponents assert they are safer, better for the environment, and faster than huge, greenhouse gas-emitting delivery trucks.

The package dropped from an electric drone flying above Tiffany Bokhari’s home in Frisco, Texas, was in her hands a few minutes after she placed an order using a mobile app.

“On the soda, you can even see the condensation on it because it’s still cold,” she added after the Wing drone owned by Alphabet had taken flight. Service was new to the area and continued on a limited scale. Still, Wing provided a comparison of up to 1,000 daily deliveries in one section of the Brisbane metropolitan area in Australia.

Several providers to adopt drone deliveries

Several providers, including Israeli company Flytrex, Wing, and e-commerce juggernaut Amazon, already have operations going or will by the end of the year in portions of Texas, North Carolina, or California.

In a 2013 interview with CBS, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos introduced a delivery drone and predicted that aerial packages would routinely zoom from fulfillment centers to consumers’ doorsteps within five years.

However, this has not been the case for the firm that has otherwise permeated every part of modern life, from streaming to food buying to healthcare.

Last year’s accident of an Amazon delivery drone during a test, which caused a brush fire, was another setback for the company’s faltering drone ambitions.

Others have made more steady progress, and in April, Wing announced the “first commercial drone delivery service” in a large metropolitan area of the United States: Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas.

Wing, which also delivers to some regions in Australia and Finland, has a weight restriction of 2.5 to 3 pounds (just over one kilo).

“An entire roasted chicken… that’s actually a good visual for the size of what fits,” said Jonathan Bass, who heads marketing and communications for Wing.

Small and lightweight products, such as takeout food, prescriptions, and domestic items such as toothbrushes, have proven suitable for airborne delivery, although drones have for years delivered medical supplies in parts of Africa.

Drop-offs of perishable goods, like blood, by drone, make sense in areas where infrastructure is poor and air transport is the best alternative, but other experts are doubtful about its applicability elsewhere.

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