This week the prospect of pizza by drone from store-to-door hit the headlines again - seven years years after a similar PR fly-by prompted stories insisting it just around the corner for needy and greedy fast food fans. Meanwhile other drone delivery innovations already under way or in the pipeline don't seem to interest the media much.
The prospect of pizza by drone door-to-door in Huntly on the front page of Wednesday's Waikato Times. Photo: RNZ Mediawatch
“Yes, you read that right! Huntly will be the first place in Aotearoa to receive pizza and courier packages delivered by drone,” the Waikato Times front page excitedly told readers on Wednesday - above a picture of a nifty white drone dangling a box on a string below it.
“Piping hot pizza will soon be winging its way across the skies of Huntly, in a New Zealand first that’s bound to bring a buzz to the north Waikato town,” the paper said.
That night TVNZ’s Seven Sharp host Daniel Faitaua told TVNZ viewers “the impossible would become possible” and “slices of heaven” from Domino’s would be descending on Huntly in “what’s been touted as the way of the future”
At the end of the report he was munching KFC from a bucket which said he had ordered by drone in a contrived visual gag that cracked up co-host Hilary Barry.
RNZ’s Morning Report was also convinced “hot pizza will soon be drone-delivered to doorsteps in the Waikato town.”
“Huntly will soon be buzzing with drones set to start delivering pizza by drones,” host Corin Dann told listeners.
“It feels a bit like the Jetsons,” he said, while also questioning whether it would take off and noting driverless cars are not a thing on our streets just yet.
The prospect of other greasy goodness from above excited his new co-host Ingrid Hipkiss.
“Get KFC into it - then I’m on board,” she told listeners.
Yet when Waikato Times reporter Avina Vidyadharan actually asked Huntly-ites if they really were buzzed by the news, few were as excited as the media.
One local said it would be of no use unless it delivered two dozen Waikato Draught in one go. Another said he’d shoot the drones down if they came near enough to him.
But the hungry of Huntly with long memories won’t be holding their breath anyway - because this wasn't the ‘first’ many media described.
PR blast from the past
Transport minister Simon Bridges shares a drone-delivered pizza at a photo-opportunity for Dominos. Photo: supplied
Back in 2016, SkyDrop’s fore-runner Flirtey teamed up with Domino’s to drop a pizza from a drone onto a picnic blanket in Whangaparaoa.
The transport minister at the time Simon Bridges ate the pizza for assembled media who provided the kind of publicity money can't buy.
TV3 claimed airborne pizza would soon be "just a tap of a smartphone away". Pizza drones are go! Domino's gets NZ drone delivery OK," the New Zealand Herald reported in a story that said drone delivery would start later in 2016.
Domino's Scott Bush said they would have hundreds of drones in the air in the near future and Mr Bridges said his pizza slice was “a taste of the future for New Zealanders.”
"New Zealand led the world when it gave women the vote and introduced inflation targeting," the Independent reported in the UK .
But Dominos had already drone-dropped pizza in London the year before and in Greece before that (though their transport ministers weren’t there to eat it for the cameras).
Dominos had also been beaten to the punch in New Zealand by Gisborne cafe owner and "mad sceintist" Dave Drummond dropping off lattes by drone.
In 2016 The Gisborne Herald reported that Drummond challenged Dominos to a drone-drop off race, but - lacking Dominos PR muscle - his story didn’t go global.
Back in 2015, Dave Drummond told TV3 his delivery drones were foiled by Civil Aviation Authority rules restricting deliveries to open areas with line of sight to the aircraft. And they weren't any different for Dominos.
Scientist Michelle Dickinson pointed out at that time that meant companies could only deliveries in places with few customers - let alone pizza shops
She said the real story was innovation on forestry areas and on farms where unmanned aircraft were already being deployed to do critical work, but in the absence of takeaways they didn’t get the same media coverage.
Under the headline ‘Dominos drone delivery trial is PR BS’ NBR (now Herald) tech writer Chris Keall also pointed out the drone has already done its PR job.
“Now it can be parked in the cupboard next to the pizza delivery robot.”
In fact, the DRU drone from 2016 is parked up at MOTAT - an inert reminder that airborne pizza did not take off back then - or since.
What Domino’s called “a rollout” in 2016 evidently got rolled back. 2016 came and went without flying pizza from store-to-door.
So was this week's story a PR rerun?
Not quite.
In June last year SkyDrop announced “second phase” trials when with a bigger drone that could carry “two Large Domino's pizzas with one soda and one side dish -- including dipping sauce.”
Last Wednesday the Herald’s aviation writer Grant Bradley said SkyDrop has received “Part 102 approval” from the CAA to launch in Huntly.
It can currently conduct approved deliveries during daylight hours up to 120m above Huntly.
A three-day trial in the town had already been run last November, the Herald said (evidently without the media or any ministers on hand for the photo-opp this time).
A six-week commercial Dominos trial is set for later this year, Grant Bradley reported.
And - going beyond pizza - Australia-based Swoop Aero has approval for drone flights on the West Coast for Te Whatu Ora/Health New Zealand to transport medical samples between Westport and Greymouth.
Last December RNZ’s Phil Pennington reported on a whole host of businesses applying for CAA safety sign-off for unmanned aircraft flights.
One client who wanted to spray with a drone on farms was told two years ago that they were 40th in the very slow-moving queue.
Some applicants told Phil Pennington some businesses had given up or taken their innovations offshore instead while the CAA sought to appoint extra inspectors to speed things up.
So there’s a story about innovation and inertia, and new technology butting up against old barriers - in the progress, or lack of it, in deliveries by drone.
But once again this week, it was the ‘airborne pizza’ angle pushed by a fast food brand with a big PR budget getting headlines for a ‘first.'
When TVNZ’s Seven Sharp hosts weren't munching KFC for comic effect last Wednesday night, they asked aviation lawyer Maria Pozza if delivery by drone will really take off now.
“It’ll be on a case by case basis. We are going to see more and more utilisation of satellite technology that will help with GPS positioning for drones with payloads to remote areas so it’s a wait-and-see situation,” said Dr Pozza.
Based on past experience we may not have to wait long before we see another round of reports about ‘world first’ store-to-door deliveries of 'piping hot pizza' by drone.
