Finland Will Have Their First Drone Delivery Service Tested Next Month

Alphabet-owned drone startup Wing will conduct their first test delivery in Helsinki, Finland next month. The drones will deliver merchandises to Vuosaari district, the most populated residential area of the capital city. Their starting points are Herkku Food Market, a supermarket, and Cafe Monami, a restaurant.

According to Wing, when it first introduced the idea of a trial flight, their drones can fly up to 10 km carrying along with a package weighing less than 1.5 kg. The time to finish that trip was expected to be around 10 minutes. Before this official test, the company has been running trials from Teisko to Helsinki to make sure that the devices can operate in severe conditions.

Wing has also prepared the local residents for the appearance of the drones by setting up events beforehand. This effort is to deal with the harsh criticism the company had to face due to the level of noise their drones made. Wing had conducted a similar test in Canberra, Australia and the local residents reported that even when they closed all the windows, they could still hear the devices operated.

Noise seems to be a serious problem but it is not enough to make Australia’s aviation authority reconsider their approval for Wing to do deliveries. Right after Australia, FAA granted the company a similar approval to operate in the US. In the next few months, drone delivery will be in Virginia.

While Wing’s effort is yielding good results, Prime Air, a strong competitor from Amazon is keeping its upcoming plan quite. It did reap some achievements with 2016’s trial in the UK and another similar test in the US in 2017. However, the general public have not heard much from Prime Air for a long time. In 2018, a spokesperson from Amazon confirmed that it still kept its commitment to bring drone delivery to reality.