Do City Delivery Drones Make Sense? No One Knows, but They're Flying Over NYC

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a six-propeller flying vehicle with a nearly eight-foot wingspan.

For the next year, delivery drones operated by the British company Skyports are taking daily weekday trips across New York City’s East River, between the tip of Manhattan and a pier in Brooklyn. Since early May—a bit behind schedule—the drones have carried light cargo for a New York City health care system. Right now, those loads are basically a few pounds of paper; once the healthcare system is confident the setup works, it should include nonhazardous, non-biological packages, such as light pharmaceuticals.

The drones are part of an experiment run by two New York-New Jersey agencies to discover how a relatively new and sometimes controversial sky-bound delivery tech might fit into a hectic urban environment—and the airspace above it. The pilot program will also try to answer a question that hangs over the entire drone delivery industry: Where does it make sense?

“Will there be enough regular flights (1 to 2 per hour) that the client health care system finds true value?” Stephan Pezdek, the regional freight planning manager at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which is operating the pilot, wrote in an email to WIRED. (The Port Authority declined to name the health care system for contractual reasons.) “Will deliveries make it to their destination faster and within the financial constraints of the current carriers they are using? Will the community appreciate the work and not feel like it is a disruption? All of this will inform our understanding of how the first corridor shapes up.”

The Port Authority, which is also working with the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCDEC) on this drone project, will also measure how the deliveries affect patient care, Pezdek says.

Globally, drone delivery is still in an experimental phase. What projects do exist mostly focus on carrying cargo to rural or suburban areas, where gaps in road networks and services, plus emptier skies, could make the tech a better fit. Skyports has been delivering mail in remote areas of Scotland since 2023, and carrying cargo to offshore wind turbines in Germany. The US company Zipline says it makes deliveries to and from some 5,000 health facilities across four continents; its oldest program delivers vaccines and blood products in Rwanda. In the US, companies including Alphabet’s Wing and Amazon’s Prime Air are working to expand delivery services across the South, with a focus on the suburban areas surrounding Houston, Austin, and Dallas, Texas.

For drones, dense cities present different challenges. First, there’s the safety question. New York City’s airspace is packed, hosting three international airports. In Manhattan alone, there are three publicly owned heliports. In May 2023, nearly 9,000 helicopter flights took place over city land or water, according to data compiled by the New York City Council. This drone pilot program’s start date was pushed back in part because another experimental aviation tech, an electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle, was demo-ing its own first-of-its-kind flights out of the same heliport.

That citified hustle and bustle leads to extra precautions. The pilot project was, as standard, approved by the US Federal Aviation Administration, which requires a certified drone pilot to supervise every flight. Each flight will take place over a fixed route away from residential buildings. The project must obtain a weekly NYPD permit to operate, and delays in acquiring the first one also led the city to push back its start date, says Amanda Kwan, a spokesperson for the Port Authority. The agency also spoke with three local community boards before it allowed the drones to take off.

Then there’s the noise issue. Skyports’ drones, made by an undisclosed manufacturer, are about as loud as a lawnmower (between 60 and 100 decibels). Other delivery drones hover around the 50 to 70 decibel mark, about as loud as a vacuum or traffic—a sound that should be familiar to New Yorkers. The noise might prove innocuous to city-dwellers. Or it might not. In Texas, residents complained to WIRED last year that the “buzzing” of Amazon drones in the area sounded like a constantly running leaf blower, and disturbed pet dogs and local wildlife. New York’s 311 service has a special web landing page for complaints related to the cargo drone pilot program.

Medical drone projects have so far "proven to be beneficial,” says Damon Lercel, an assistant professor specializing in manned and unmanned aviation at Purdue University. The drones could be especially helpful in a city like New York, where “typical ground transportation has its challenges, especially when there's an accident or gridlock.” Saving time by eventually flying critical medical supplies through the sky "could possibly save lives,” he says.

Whatever the outcome of this year’s New York City experiment, more drone projects are likely on the way. Rules currently being finalized by the FAA could reduce the time it takes to receive a permit to operate professional drone services beyond pilots’ visual sight lines. For now, though, the Port Authority wants to make one thing clear: Just because these test drones are flying in the city does not mean hobbyist residents can operate their own.

“Do not do this at home,” Kwan says.