LOOKING UP from play to ponder passing aircraft is a part of most childhoods. For kids in Texas’ Dallas-Fort Worth area, these days some of those passing aircraft deliver candy.

Thanks to the area’s status as AllianceTexas Mobility Innovation Zone – making it the first entire US metro area approved by the Federal Aviation Authority for drone delivery – companies from around the world, such as Alphabet-owned Wing, California-based Zipline and Dublin-based Manna Drone Delivery are busily flying autonomous aircraft beyond a visual observer’s line of sight to deliver chocolate bars, dog treats, hot coffee and over-the-counter medicine.

In the first four months of a partnership with two Walmart locations in the area that began in August 2023, Wing says it delivered to 60,000 homes. With each delivery taking less than 30 minutes and some flights taking five minutes.

Wing CEO Adam Woodworth used to be one of those kids looking skyward. He still builds model aeroplanes in his spare time, when he’s not configuring new drones. Woodworth was a Google hardware engineer when he was tasked by X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” with building the next generation of automated aircraft, making its first delivery in 2014 and spinning out as its own company in 2018.

Wing is now the largest residential drone delivery operation in the world, with commercial services in Australia, Europe, and the United States. “We’re learning so much from our partners and the customers who receive our drone deliveries,” Woodward says.

In addition to Walmart, Wing works with food delivery company DoorDash in Queensland, and has begun exploring medical drone delivery with Apian, which is building a delivery network for the National Health Service in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

“We’ve designed our system so all that’s needed from a customer is a small, clear space on the property with vertical access to the sky – no infrastructure, QR codes, or landing pads required,” Woodworth adds. “Our aircraft are also capable of delivering fragile goods like eggs or even fresh hot coffee.”

Ireland’s Manna Drone Delivery is also using Dallas-Fort Worth as a testing ground. Once an order is placed, Manna Aero drones take off from a delivery hub and fly at 60 miles per hour at a height of around 200 feet, the company says. The drone then partially descends before lowering its package on a tether to the customer’s yard below.

Drone delivery will initially work best in high-density suburbs, he says, where large areas like Dublin with 1.1 million residents will be served using eight 4 km-radius cells. This means three-minute flights, reducing the volume and duration of flights needed. Manna uses heat maps for flight planning, he says, so drones never fly the same flight path.