Venligst tjek din email for at verificere din konto
Brazilian drone services provider Speedbird has become “a powerhouse with nascent operations in seven countries” according to a report by Commercial UAV News.
Speedbird co-founder and CEO Manouel Coelho told Commercial UAV News “In early 2020, we received the experimental certificate (CAVE) from Agencia Nacional de Aviacao Civil (ANAC) and with that we started operations to accumulate data eventually proving to the authorities that our operations and our aircraft were worthy of the Type Certificate (TC). We flew thousands of missions and refined our processes and workflows as well as our aircraft to the point that in January 2022 our DLV-1, a lightweight, six-rotor vehicle, that can carry up to 6.6 pounds of payload received the TC from ANAC in the form of a CAER (Special RPA Certificate of Airworthiness). Speedbird’s delivery operations in Brazil average of 60 to 90 flights a day in selected regions of the country.
The company has expanded into Israel the UK, where they won the bid to deliver the Royal Mail to remote locations. Letters and parcels are transported from Royal Mail’s Kirkwall delivery office in the mainland to the town of Stromness, where drones deliver them to Royal Mail staff on the islands of Graemsay and Hoy. Postal workers then collect the cargo and follow their normal delivery routes. This is a business model that can be applied to any place on Earth with comparable conditions, says the report.
“We are very proud of our partnership with Skyports in the United Kingdom and through this association we won the contract to deliver the mail to remote islands that always had trouble with weather and unpredictable conditions,” Coelho said. “The fact that our certified aircraft can do the job in difficult terrain was a plus when winning the contract with the Royal Mail. These isolated islands have always struggled with reliable mail service due to adverse weather conditions and distance from the mainland.
We had a similar experience in Israel but due to completely different reasons,” Coelho said. “The skies over Israel are one of the most monitored and carefully managed in the world and the Israelis are real pioneers in UAV technology. Through our great partners Cando Drones and Dronery and we were invited to demonstrate our capabilities in an actual airport environment and just two miles from the border and we passed the test with flying colors. Now we are working with the authorities to expand regular operations in that country.
“We monitor and record every flight from takeoff to delivery and back and then present the data to ANAC to keep a constant record of our operations,” he said. “We hope this overabundance of flight data will serve to confirm that our delivery operations are safe and will be the foundation of a more expansive service in Brazil and other countries.”