Air mail: Orkney residents to receive post by drone
The UK's first drone delivery service which can be conducted on a permanent basis has been launched in Orkney to provide locals with their mail. Royal Mail and Skyports Drone Services have launched the service to deliver letters and parcels from the Mainland to the islands of Graemsay and Hoy. While the service will initially operate for three months, it could be continued on a permanent basis under existing regulatory frameworks due to Orkney's unique landscape and the proximity of the islands to one another. The drone service is expected to significantly improve service levels and delivery times to Graemsay and Hoy, as weather and geography can cause disruption to delivery services. Report by Jonesia. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00 Throughout its 500 year history, the Royal Mail has used just about every vehicle at its disposal to deliver post.
00:08 From planes and trains to quad bikes, seen here on the Scottish island of Kerrera in 2004.
00:16 Now the islands just off Scotland's north coast are about to receive their mail by drone.
00:22 The Orkney Islands will be home to the UK's first permanent drone delivery service in a joint operation between the Royal Mail and Skyport's drone services.
00:32 The close proximity to the islands means that we can actually use existing CAA permissions to conduct flights there.
00:41 The drones are fully electric so they don't produce any carbon emissions and obviously that helps to reduce our emissions as a business.
00:49 Mail will be transported on Orkney's main island from the Kirkwall Delivery Office to Stromness,
00:56 where drones will transport items to staff on Gramesy and Hoy to allow postal workers to carry out their usual delivery routes.
01:04 The residents there receive their mail about 24 hours earlier than they would do otherwise if they were using the ferry and the van service which they currently do at the moment.
01:12 So how it works at the moment is literally a postie packs the box themselves with mail and packages, brings it down to our drone and our drone operator.
01:21 That box is loaded onto the drone, the drone flies over to the island and when the drone lands it basically drops the drone,
01:27 the postie picks up the box with the mail and the packages in it and then delivers it for the last mile or last half a mile to the people's houses located on these islands.
01:36 So it's super simple, very, very easy to interact with, just picking up a box that our drone has actually dropped on the ground.
01:42 The service will run on Orkney for three months.
01:45 If successful, this new brand of airmail could be extended to other islands and hard to reach areas of the UK.
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