I have some experience working with zipline in Rwanda who use drones to deliver blood and urgent medical supplies, I can try to comment on some of these comments
- These drones (with a 1Kg payload) fly a few 100' up and cannot be heard (or easily seen) from the ground. This so-called 'lower airspace' is a key resource that I predict governments will be looking to exploit.
- That's below pretty much all manned aviation, except around airfields of course
- Zipline use corridors, which are pre-agreed flightpaths, but there's lots of them, to 100's of hospitals/clinics and they are very tightly defined. There is a failsafe whereby the drone shuts down and parachutes itself to the ground if it finds itself out of the corridor. I believe that has never actually happened except in demo.
- They fly a pre-determined route, but ATC is aware of them and can (and regularly does) ask them to hold station by orbiting if there is a chance of conflict.
- Rwanda/blood is an extremely good use case - it's a small but very hilly country with poor roads and blood has a short half life but can save can save a life. They aim to have the blood in the air within 20 minutes of the request and a typical outward flight is 20 minutes. So 40 minutes vs up to 24 hours by road.
- I agree the use case for my Amazon order may not be so compelling