FLYING DELIVERIES

In 2016, American pizza company Domino’s, citing flexible civil aviation regulations, chose New Zealand to trial delivery of its pizzas via drone — a chicken and cranberry winged its way to Whangaparaoa, north of Auckland. The trial didn’t come to much in Aotearoa, but retailers, including Amazon, are investing heavily in drone technology to speed up delivery of packages in urban areas. Reducing courier vehicles in cities could substantially free up innercity traffic.

But regulators in cities like London and New York are grappling with how to police the airspace as they face the prospect of thousands of drones fanning out across cities each day.

Taking drone transport to the next level, aviation start- up Kitty Hawk has been testing its autonomous planes in the South Island. Operating like a supersized drone on a predetermined route, the Kitty Hawk Cora can transport two people up to 100 kilometres and reach a height of 900 metres. It can take off and land on rooftops or in car parks like a helicopter so it could be a convenient way to commute from the outer suburbs. Kitty Hawk has now teamed up with Air New Zealand and Zephyr Air to develop and test Cora for an air- taxi service.