Commercial drone news from UASFeed — delivery, inspection, agriculture, public safety, and the operators putting uncrewed aircraft to work.
Wentzville, Mo. advanced Bill 4914 on Oct. 21, making drone-delivery bases a conditional use that needs FAA approval, insurance and noise testing. The city can regulate the nest, not the flights, and the bill sets no payload or drone-count cap.
Read the story →Teriyaki Madness began Zipline drone delivery Oct. 15 from its Denton, Texas shop and promises DFW and Houston expansion later this year, but neither company has named the hub serving orders, the delivery radius or the price.
Matternet and UK healthcare logistics startup Apian added Great Ormond Street Hospital to their London NHS drone network on Oct 20, as Apian says it has flown over 13,000 clinical items since October 2024.
Drone Nerds' new Evolver DFR puts a Blue UAS Parrot drone, a DBOX dock and SkyfireAI software on one purchase order with no subscription. It has no published price, and its parent XTI is working under note waivers and a going-concern warning.
Wing now flies Walmart orders from seven Charlotte-area Supercenters, with two more due soon. The bigger story is the April 2025 FAA review behind it: up to 25 hubs and 500 flights per hub per day, with local towns controlling only the parking-lot permit.
Upper Darby and Bensalem police say drones are catching car thieves and cutting retail theft. The one price on record, though, is Lower Merion's $375,000 request, which DroneXL says covers a single docked drone over five years.
Kirkwood, Mo. let a Walmart/Wing drone nest permit die without a motion on Oct. 15, even though its own planners had recommended approval with 11 conditions. Local outlets still disagree on whether the council voted at all.
Zipline's 10th-anniversary film recalls a bouncy castle used to catch drones in Rwanda, but its headline '51% reduction in maternal mortality' claim stretches a Wharton finding that measured in-hospital postpartum hemorrhage deaths at drone-served facilities.
Skydio's CEO says Dominion Energy added 100 docked drones, but in September Dominion said on stage that it had 18 Docks deployed and had agreed to a deal for 100 more over several years. The numbers point to a contract, not 100 docks already installed.
Portland's council voted 11-0 to notify the state it may pause drone-delivery support facilities, starting a 45-day clock just as Amazon canceled the first permit meeting for its planned Prime Air center in North Portland.
An Ohio ag-drone operator says he took a 180-day FAA suspension over videos of a heavy-lift drone hauling a deer, a log and a sled. His case shows how narrowly Part 137 defines agricultural work, and how little room the rules leave for heavy-lift jobs that fall outside it.
Zipline started flying Austin-area deliveries from a hub that Round Rock says its zoning code does not cover, while the FAA's draft review of up to 30,000 Austin deliveries a day relies on local zoning to decide where chargers and dropboxes go.
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