Following US online retailer Amazon.com Inc, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) yesterday tested its first drone delivery service, promising to whisk ginger tea to customers within an hour despite tight controls on airspace.
Alibaba’s flagship consumer-to-consumer marketplace Taobao.com (淘寶), estimated to hold more than 90 percent of the Chinese market, showed off a photograph of a black-and-silver drone with helicopter-like propellers carrying a white box to launch the service.
However, the option is confined to just three days and a few areas of three Chinese mega-cities — Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou — and applies only to one brand of tea from one particular vendor, with a limit of 450 deliveries in total.
“For consumers ... such a cool consumption experience will give them more surprises,” Taobao said in a statement on its microblog.
Airspace in China is strictly controlled, with the majority used by the military. The government allows limited use of civil drones for activities ranging from rescue to observation, and operators are required to apply for permission beforehand.
Alibaba said in a statement the logistical arrangements were being handled by courier company YTO Express Logistics Co (圓通速遞), which had received regulatory approval for the trial service.
“China is still in the initial phase of establishing regulations on commercial usage of drones, a lot of areas are still completely blank,” Zhang Qihuai (張起淮), an attorney at the Beijing-based Lanpeng Law Firm (藍鵬律師事務所), told Bloomberg News. “Key regulations regarding flight altitude, accountability for accidents have not been established yet. There’s still a long way to go before drones can really be commercially used in China.”
Alibaba and YTO said they have notified Chinese aviation authorities about the flights as required by regulation and that they believed that the deliveries complied with all existing rules.
At least one of the drones was expected to fly from YTO’s warehouse in the eastern outskirts of Beijing and reach the 330m China World Trade Center in less than an hour. A deliveryman will await the parcel’s arrival on the ground floor and carry it to customer, a Taobao spokeswoman in Beijing said.
The Civil Aviation Administration of China issued regulations in 2009 requiring operators of drones to be identified when applying to use such devices.
In 2013, a Shanghai bakery was forced to scrap plans to deliver cakes by drone after a test flight sparked concerns over public safety and attracted the scrutiny of police, state media reported.
Meanwhile, regulatory issues have hampered plans by Amazon to offer drone deliveries in the US.
Company founder Jeff Bezos said last year he hoped to move forward, but added that the services could be delayed by red tape as US authorities were still considering proposals for commercial drone use.
Drone use in the US was dealt another setback last month after an operator lost control of a SZ DJI Technology Co-built quadcopter and it crashed on White House grounds, the US Secret Service said.
US President Barack Obama later stressed the importance of rules to ensure drone safety.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg
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