United Parcel Service (UPS), the world’s largest package delivery firm, announced its drone delivery subsidiary.
Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS has applied for the Federal Aviation Administration certifications needed to expand the business.
The launch of UPS Flight Forward marks the latest move in the battle between UPS, Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google for the lead in the nascent U.S. drone delivery industry.
UPS said Flight Forward could receive FAA certification for multiple drones and pilots as early as this year, potentially becoming the first company to win such approvals.
UPS is laying the foundation for a sustainable drone delivery business, said Bala Ganesh, vice president of the Advanced Technology Group at UPS.
The company plans to roll its revenue-generating hospital project with drone partner Matternet into Flight Forward.
UPS and Matternet run five to 10 daily drone flights that transport human medical specimens for WakeMed Health & Hospitals in Raleigh, North Carolina. The drone flights carry blood and tissue samples from various points around WakeMed’s main hospital campus the short distance to its central laboratory.
UPS plans to expand the scope of its WakeMed delivery business as it recruits other hospital customers.
Flight Forward is targeting healthcare companies as part of an ongoing UPS effort to use higher-profit specialty deliveries to offset the margin squeeze from booming residential e-commerce deliveries.
Alphabet’s Wing got a jump on rivals earlier this year when the sister unit of search engine Google became the first company to get U.S. air carrier certification for a single-pilot operation.
Amazon, known for its drone delivery tests, said in June it is building fully electric drones. Amazon has numerous experimental certifications to test and evaluate its systems.
