Wing Drone Delivery Lets Neighbors Send 82-Cent Potatoes, Raising Consent Questions

The drone used in the service, the Wing Hummingbird 7000W-B, weighs less than 15 pounds and has 16 propellers—four for horizontal movement and 12 for vertical—according to the report. It has a top speed of 60 miles per hour, a carrying capacity of up to 2.7 pounds and a delivery radius of about six miles. It is authorized by the Federal Aviation Administration for beyond-line-of-sight piloting. Through Wing’s partnership with Walmart, the report said, customers in the delivery range can get household items dropped onto their lawns in 25 minutes.

The neighborhood experiment began when a resident named Will added the author and a half-dozen other local fathers to a group chat. Will had discovered that their area was now within range of Wing’s Walmart partnership and posted a video of a drone lowering a blue doggie bag into his backyard. He asked whether anyone was looking for “dumb stuff to entertain the kids” and added, “Hopefully liquor store will get on board soon.” The author then asked whether drone delivery had to be ordered to one’s own yard.

Will responded minutes later that he had ordered a potato to the author’s address “to see if I can send to other people.” Another neighbor, Rick, said he and Will had separately scanned the list of more than two thousand deliverable items and reached the same conclusion. “There is currently an air strike squadron of potatoes headed to our neighborhood,” Rick wrote, according to the report.

At 12:14 p.m., a drone dropped a doggie bag in the author’s yard containing a single russet potato and a bottle of water, the report said. Three minutes later, another arrived in Will’s yard with the same contents. The report said the water bottle appeared to have been added as ballast; every Wing order placed by the author came with one. Other neighbors joined in: one ordered a pair of gloves, while another who lived just outside the delivery range could only watch. A storm eventually moved in, and the potato deliveries tapered off. The author’s sixth-grader turned the sky potato into oven fries, and Will baked his.

The cost was 82 cents per potato delivery, total, according to the report. Each order came from a Walmart Supercenter a few miles away. There was no minimum order, no delivery fee, and prices were the same as in-store. Wing was not collecting sales tax, the report said, and the author concluded that Wing was losing money on the transactions at those prices. The author later sent a potato to a friend named Bill who had been going through a rough time; days afterward, Bill asked for candy to be drone-delivered for his children. The author sent the candy, another potato and a link to the Wing app.

Wing’s terms of service state that customers “will not use the Service to engage in any unlawful behavior, or to cause harassment, nuisance, annoyance or inconvenience to Wing, its users or any other person.” Asked what safeguards prevent unauthorized deliveries, Wing spokesperson Jessie Poole-Strang said the company has safely completed more than 1 million residential drone deliveries, averaging thousands per day. Customers must be physically present for their first order, the spokesperson said, and every order requires a verified account and confirmation of a clear delivery zone. Just like traditional delivery or mailing a package, customers can choose to send an order to a friend or family member’s address in an eligible service area, the spokesperson said. In the rare event a resident has a concern about a delivery to their property, Wing’s support team can help, the spokesperson added.

The report also weighed the environmental and economic questions around single-item drone deliveries. For a lightweight purchase such as a stick of deodorant, a bottle of sunscreen or a potato, drone delivery appeared more environmentally friendly than driving to the store, the author wrote. As long as the service remains subsidized, it is cheaper than using delivery apps, the report said, and could be genuinely useful in situations where someone cannot leave the house. The report said the only apparent barriers to misuse were Wing’s terms of service and users’ own judgment, and it asked what safeguards the company has against unauthorized deliveries.