A Wing food delivery drone caught fire after landing on power lines in Australia. Thousands of people were left without power after the network was shut down.
Some 2,000 people were without electricity for 45 minutes, while 300 had no power for three hours.
Danny Donald told The Age that the drone caught fire and fell to the ground after landing on top of 11,000volts.
A Wing spokesman told the publication that the drones came to rest on an overhead power line. According to the company, it reported the incident to Energex. The power went out two hours later during the process of retrieving. We apologize for any disruptions. We are reviewing yesterday's event.
The drones fell to the ground.
Donald said he had never seen it happen before. The equipment malfunction could have been the cause. It might have been a mistake. There was no damage to the network, he said. Donald said that the meal was still hot when the crew arrived.
15 years ago, we asked people to be careful if they were giving their children kites for Christmas and where they were flying them. Parents are being asked to be careful with where their children fly their drones.
The drone was flown by a subsidiary of the parent company. Wing's drones operate as both fixed-wing aircraft and hovering copters, flying autonomously to deliver food and beverages over short distances. In Australia, the company has found success in the suburbs.
As of August last year, Wing was able to deliver to 100,000 customers in the area where the crash took place, and has since made 200,000 deliveries. Suburban areas give plenty of customers, easy flying conditions, and are not as well served by delivery companies.
Delivery drones have not met high expectations.
Over the past decade, drones have been much talked about, but they have failed to scale in the way that companies promised. Zipline is a focused application that delivers small but high value items like blood and medicine in rural areas.
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