Wing Aviation has halted its drone delivery flights in Canberra as it shakes up the way it does business. It says they are "suspended" but is not saying for how long.
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It is looking to partner with shopping centres and other big venues so that deliveries can go straight from the seller to the customer.
The model it's used for nearly five years was one where deliveries were from a central depot in Gunghalin. Shops which wanted to sell and deliver by drone had to locate at the Wing centre.
![A Wing drone on a previous delivery in Franklin. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong A Wing drone on a previous delivery in Franklin. Picture by Sitthixay Ditthavong](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/XBxJDq6WLub2UphQ8wEq23/626838e3-e860-4d4f-9eb3-8a340beaff64.jpg/r0_232_4345_2675_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
The idea now is to land the drones on the top of shopping centres to pick up the goods directly from the shop or cafe underneath, and take them directly to the customer. In Ipswich in Queensland, for example, where this type of service already operates, drones land on the top floor of carparks at a shopping centre.
But it's not clear how long any new deal will take to put in place in Canberra.
Canberra has a much more complex set of authorities than Ipswich because of its part federal and part ACT government structure. The proximity of the airport also complicates matters.
Unfortunately, we don't have a suitable site in Canberra at the moment.
- Wing
The upshot is that Wing Aviation (which is part of Google's parent company, Alphabet) has stopped its current operation with no start date for a new one.
The company said: "Unfortunately, we don't have a suitable site in Canberra at the moment from which to offer service, which means that for the foreseeable future, we've concluded residential delivery from Mitchell into the Gungahlin area."
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The company said it would continue to employ people at its Mitchell depot but it was not clear what workers would do in the absence of a day-in-day-out service.
It did not say that its past way of doing things had failed.
"Having delivered over 100,000 packages to thousands of homes in greater Gungahlin, we're proud of the ground-breaking service that was started in the ACT."