Drones deliver cups of coffee in Australian city with CASA air traffic control

Drone delivery: Wing UAVs deliver speedy payloads of 1.5kgs within the town of Logan, Queensland. Photo / Wing, Supplied

While our own travel plans are grounded by Covid alert levels and the prospect of a takeaway delivery is still pending, click and collect is being elevated to a new level across the Tasman.

Google's drone delivery service Wing landed in Australia a little under two years ago.

Since 2019, Logan City, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, has laid the claim of being the "drone delivery capital of the world".

The city not much larger than Christchurch has seen 50,000 orders delivered by flying drones.

The Wing project, which belongs to Google's Alphabet holdings, is still at a fledgling stage. After several attempts in Finland and parts of the US, it is in Australia where the technology has really taken off.

Logan City in particular has become a launch-pad for the technology.

According to the company, top items for drone delivery in Logan last year included 10,000 cups of hot coffee and 1200 roast chickens.

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Cruising at an altitude of 40 metres and at speeds of 110 kph, the 12 rotor-engined drones allow for speedy delivery of convenience goods.

Despite the noise, the novelty of having a delivery by drone is clearly something people are willing to pay for.

With a maximum payload of just 1.5kg, don't expect to order groceries by drone any time soon.

However, the real headache has been sharing thousands of drone deliveries with air traffic control at a moment's notice.

As laudable as flying deliveries of fried chicken might appear, the real ambitions of the company is to develop flight permissions system controlled airspace

The drone company has delivered 1200 roast chickens to the town of Logan. Photo / Wing, Supplied

Working with CASA in Australia, it is currently restricted to operations over Canberra and Logan.

Last year the company hit back at a FAA ruling in the US requiring drones to broadcast Remote Identification (RID). The stricter rules on air traffic temporarily took Wing out of action in Virginia, however it complained that logging flight data would put users off.

"This approach creates barriers to compliance and will have unintended negative privacy impacts for businesses and consumers. "