Royal Mail has expanded its drone delivery route

Royal Mail has ramped up its drone delivery service by expanding its self-driven air postal route – is your area now on the list?

The British multinational postal service and courier company, has launched 50 new routes that will use the high-tech software to make postal deliveries via the twin-engined drones which can even fly in difficult weather conditions with their 10-metre wingspan.

The expansion of the new service comes after the the regular mail service suffered from postal delays in 45 postcode areas 2021, and as trade union leaders are gearing up to take industrial action this summer – but this new service could mark the decline of the postal worker as the Royal Mail is planning to increase its dependency on drones and these 50 new “postal drone routes” are only the start.

Royal Mail, who previously warned consumers about a mail text scam, plans to deploy 200 drones to deliver mail across the UK – with the hope of expanding the fleet to 500 in the long-term, the company revealed.

So where will benefit first?

Where are the new Royal Mail postal drone routes?

The new Royal Mail postal drone routes are set to benefit island communities across the Isles of Scilly, Shetland Islands, Orkney Islands and the Hebrides. Usually in these areas mail is transported via ferry or aeroplane.

Royal Mail boss Simon Thompson is looking at ways he can rival companies like Amazon and he’s already in talks with Network Rail to dramatically increase transportation of letters by train.

He said, “On time delivery regardless of our customers location or the weather, whilst protecting our environment is our goal. Even though we go everywhere, Royal Mail already has the lowest CO2 emissions per parcel delivered, this initiative will help reduce our emissions even further.”

Over the last 18 months, four regions, have been taking part in a trial service including the Isle of Mull in Scotland, on the Isles of Scilly off the Cornish coast and between Kirkwall and North Ronaldsay, on the Orkney Islands.

The drones can carry mail up to 100kg in weight per trip and as part of the trial letters and parcels were flown from Tingwell Airport in Lerwick to Unst – with a 50 mile flight each way it is Britain’s most northerly inhabited island.

And customers have a mixed reaction about the new Royal Mail drone delivery route.

One excited customer said, “The Royal Mail will be delivering packages and posts by drones on remote islands around the UK. Isn’t that fabulous?” 

Another tweeted, “So Royal mail is gonna use drones. But they’re not designed to remove the human element except they WILL remove the need for vans, planes and trains. So it WILL do away with humans then cos its gonna use less of them to deliver the mail.”

And a third added, “@RoyalMail Testing drones not good will never let fly onto my property, puts postmen out of work”.

Another Twitter user joked, “Your parcel’s landed in a tree.”