Drone startup Skye Air completes 175 deliveries in 21 days

Drone delivery startup Skye Air -- part of a consortium for the Telangana government's "Medicines from the Sky" project --has successfully completed 175 deliveries in a short span of 21 days, a release said.

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Launched by Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on September 11 from Vikarabad, the project is an initiative of the Telangana government in partnership with the World Economic Forum, Niti Aayog and HealthNet Global of Apollo Hospitals.

These flights were a part of the live demonstration trials conducted in real-time with vaccines and medicines, offering drone support to e-commerce giant Flipkart, logistic service provider Blue Dart and on-demand hyperlocal delivery platform Dunzo Digital, the release on Monday said.

Skye Air under three different consortiums -- Blue Dart Med Express consortium, Dunzo Med Air consortium and Flipkart Air Consortium -- offered an all-rounded ecosystem for drone-based logistic transportation, it said.

Most of the flights during these trials covered a distance of about 11 kms, in Vikarabad. We also did reverse flights carrying back diagnostic samples from the PHC to Area Hospital, which we see will be important to bring cost economic viability to the overall solution by drones,? said Swapnik Jakkampundi, co-founder, Skye Air.

For the Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) trials, Skye Air had two certified remote pilots who had been specifically trained for these trials and were constantly monitoring and in control of the unmanned air vehicle, the company said.

These drones will deliver up to 11 km within 15 minutes with each drone carrying numerous vaccines in temperature-controlled boxes. These drones carried numerous vaccines, excluding COVID-19 vaccines, Skye Air said.