iscover
Wing has pulled its drone delivery service from Australia with little fanfare after seven years.
The company, owned by Google parent Alphabet, ended its partnership with DoorDash on 16 January, having previously operated from locations including Melbourne’s eastern suburbs and Logan and Ipswich in Queensland; it had already pulled out of Canberra in 2023.
This content is available exclusively to Australian Aviation members.
A monthly membership is only $5.99 or save with our annual plans.
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
- Unlimited access to all Australian Aviation digital content
- Access to the Australian Aviation app
- Australian Aviation quarterly print & digital magazines
- Access to In Focus reports every month on our website
- Access to our Behind the Lens photo galleries and other exclusive content
- Daily news updates via our email bulletin
“Wing ceased its drone delivery service in Australia earlier this year to focus on increased demand and the pace of scale in the United States,” a spokesperson confirmed to Australian Aviation.
“Although Wing is no longer offering a delivery service in Australia, the company has retained staff in-country to support our global operations.”
The business, technically a subsidiary of Google’s parent company Alphabet, once conducted more deliveries in Australia than in any other country and had dubbed Logan the “drone delivery capital of the world”.
While the spokesperson was unable to confirm recent Australian delivery figures, Australian Aviation understands that operations have been busy across Wing’s US network.
The company currently delivers to Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Houston, with Cincinnati, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, St Louis, Tampa and the Bay Area all listed as “coming soon” on its website.
Wing started life in 2012 as one of the first projects at the tech giant’s super-secretive research lab, Google X, alongside its augmented reality eyeglasses and self-driving cars.
It launched its first trials in 2018 before starting more commercial flights the following year in both Canberra and Logan.
Delivery initially operated from stores located within Google’s distribution centre but then shifted to picking up packages from the roofs of shopping centres and then supermarket car parks.
Speaking to the Australian Aviation Podcast in 2023, the business’ general manager at the time, Simon Rossi, said Wing was conducting around 1,000 deliveries per day in Australia.
“Online ordering has more than doubled in the last four or five years since COVID, and we ride the wave of that; more online orders creates more opportunity for drone delivery,” he said.
“They’re safe, they’re fast, they’re affordable, and they’re an environmentally friendly way to do last-mile delivery or on-demand delivery, and when we come back to that, we continue to see different cohorts of people using it.
“I think that there’s so many benefits to drone delivery and what it can bring that we do expect to continue to see greater demand, in addition to what we saw through COVID and the contactless wave that we rode.”
A 2024 report for Airservices Australia estimated that the country will see 60 million drone flights per year by 2043.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?
Make Australian Aviation a preferred news source on Google.
Click here to add Australian Aviation as a preferred news source.
