Delivery drones may soon take off in the U.S.

Delivery drones are so fast they can zip a pint of ice cream to a customer's driveway before it melts.

- By DgE-ANN DURBIN

Yet the long-promised technology has been slow to take off in the United States. More than six years after the Federal Aviation Administration approved commercial home deliveries with drones, the service mostly has been confined to a few suburbs and rural areas.

That could soon change. The FAA proposed a new rule last week that would make it easier for companies to fly drones outside of an operator's line of sight and therefore over longer distances. A handful of companies do that now, but they had to obtain waivers and certification as an air carrier to deliver packages.

While the rule is intended to streamline the process, authorized retailers and drone companies that have tested fulfilling orders from the sky say they plan to make drone-based deliveries available to millions more U.S. households.

Walmart’s multistate

Walmart and Wing, a drone company owned by Google parent Alphabet, currently provide deliveries from 18 Walmart stores in the Dallas area. By next summer, it expects to expand to 100 Walmart stores in Atlanta; Charlotte, N.C.; Houston; and Orlando and Tampa, Fla.

After launching its Prime Air delivery service in College Station, Texas, in late 2022, Amazon received FAA permission last year to operate autonomous drones that fly beyond a pilot's line of sight. The e-commerce company has since expanded its drone delivery program to suburban Phoenix and has plans to offer the service in Dallas; San Antonio, Texas; and Kansas City.

The concept of drone delivery has been around for well over a decade. Drone maker Zipline, which works with Walmart in Arkansas and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, began making deliveries to hospitals in Rwanda in 2016. Israel-based Flytrex, one of the drone companies DoorDash works with to carry out orders, launched drone delivery to households in Iceland in 2017.