Black Swan.
By Taylor Rains
Bulgarian manufacturer Dronamics will soon debut a pilotless cargo aircraft the size of a delivery van, named Black Swan.
The plane boasts 50% lower costs than competing aircraft, a 770-pound payload, and a 1550-mile range.
The company will operate the aircraft as the world’s first “cargo drone airline” starting in 2023.
A new cargo aircraft is getting ready to hit the market.
European manufacturing company Dronamics will soon debut the Black Swan — a pilotless drone certified to carry freight in the European Union starting in 2023.
The concept is the brainchild of Bulgarian brothers Konstantin and Svilen Rangelov. Speaking with Insider, the latter said the pair started looking into the market in 2013 when Amazon began dabbling in drone deliveries.
However, the brothers saw logistical difficulties in sending small drones, like Amazon’s, to deliver directly to homes and believed there was a better way of getting personal packages to each customer.
In Bulgaria, Rangelov said cargo is flown into Sofia, offloaded onto a big truck, driven hundreds of miles, and then offloaded onto a smaller van that delivers the package to individual sites.
The brothers saw the big truck as a costly step: “We said let’s map the size of the vehicle to fit exactly what you can fit in a delivery van in the last mile,'” Rangelov said. “This way we get to cut a step from the process.”
The resulting product — which is about half the capacity of a U-Haul moving van — can offer customers fast and low-cost freight transport, enabling same-day delivery with the help of some 3,000 airstrips across Europe.
Many of the said airstrips are closer to customers than the main distribution centers, making them even more convenient for same-day deliveries, according to Rangelov.
Moreover, the design helps Dronamics differentiate itself from other cargo drone operators that typically fly lighter freight over shorter distances.
“Most small delivery drones are an attempt to solve the last-mile problem,” the company told news outlet Drone DJ in 2018. “They are the bike messenger, we are the cross-country truck.”
