Ameriflight, a Dallas-based commercial air carrier in business since 1968, has received permission from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate drone aircraft. The company, which has about 156 planes in its fleet along with 14 bases, 1,500 weekly departures, and 200 destinations, is partnering with Matternet, a developer of a large urban drone delivery system, to build a drone delivery network.

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The network will be used for healthcare and ecommerce deliveries to customers located in dense urban and suburban environments across the country.

Ameriflight owner and chair Jim Martell said in a statement, “The approval to add drones to our operation positions Ameriflight, once again, at the forefront of innovation in the aviation industry. Moving forward with the future of our newly operative UAS division allows us to expand into a largely untapped delivery market with a lot of room for speed and safety logistic improvements.”

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Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos added, “This is not a test program or a future deployment concept — this is the real, scalable, and safe drone-based solution that customers are looking for.” Ameriflight says it delivers 75,000 packages daily and that commercial ecommerce deliveries are a top priority.

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Matternet and UPS partnered in 2019 to launch drone delivery services in the U.S. and in 2022, Matternet’s M2 drone became the first drone delivery system to achieve Certification by the FAA in the U.S. Ameriflight will deploy the M2 fleet of drones using Matternet’s software platform from a central remote network operations center.

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Key details such as how many drones will be deployed and where and how quickly the drone fleet will scale are still unclear. Ameriflight also intends to operate its uncrewed aircraft as a supplement to its crewed operations and not replace its current flying operation, aircraft, or pilots. Pricing and delivery routes and times have yet to be announced.

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Sources: https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2023/06/15/ameriflight-ecommerce/