You can now get takeaway delivered by drone in Iceland

Rex Features
Harriet Pavey29 August 2017

Londoners may be familiar with the sight of pizza-laden mopeds whizzing around the city, delivering delicious dinners to those of us who don’t fancy leaving the sofa.

But as Iceland trials its first drone delivery service, the comforting arrival of a bloke on a bike may become a thing of the past, and instead the skies could be filled with flying Dim Sum.

Well, almost. Lucky foodies in Reykjavik are the first in the world to be able to order burgers, sushi and even beer online to be delivered by drone.

At the moment, drone service is only available on one route. But a normal delivery driver on that route would have to make a 25 minute trip along winding roads around a wide river. Drone delivery cuts that journey time down to four minutes.

The commercial drone delivery service is the invention of Israeli drone logistics company Flytrex and Icelandic eCommerce company AHA.

Of course, there’s a catch – the in-flight package has to be lighter than six pounds (although that’s still a lot of food) and Flytrex flights start at about 62p per mile, so they aren’t cheap.

The service isn’t door-to-door yet, either. As it stands in Iceland, a delivery person loads the drone with food and sends it off. When the machine arrives at the other end, another delivery person collects it to drive to the final destination. Effectively, it skips out the winding road to get orders to their customers much more quickly.

Iceland: in pictures

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The company is hoping to develop a door-to-door delivery system too, lowering your dinner straight down to you using a wire – it’s all a bit Black Mirror.

At the moment the drone can only travel six miles at a time, but with the abundance of delicious take-out food all over London, we can’t see that being a problem.

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