Skyports Begins Year-Long East River Medical Drone Run Between Manhattan and Brooklyn

Skyports Drone Services starts a 12-month commercial drone trial today, flying light pharmaceuticals across New York’s East River between Manhattan’s Downtown Skyport and the Brooklyn Marine Terminal under contract with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

The aircraft is a Brazilian-built Speedbird Aero DLV-2, a 55-pound (25 kg) electric multirotor with a 13-pound (6 kg) payload capacity. It will fly the same East River crossing on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. through April 2027, carrying non-hazardous medical supplies for an unnamed non-profit New York City health system. Each one-way leg averages four minutes against up to 20 minutes by road.

The trial is the clearest sign yet that urban middle-mile drone delivery in the United States is moving past pilot demos and into scheduled commercial routes, even with the FAA‘s Part 108 BVLOS rulemaking still in flux.

The Aircraft Is The Same Drone Royal Mail Uses In Orkney

The Speedbird DLV-2 flying the New York route is a 55-pound electric multirotor about 5 feet (1.5 m) across, with a 10-mile (16 km) range, the same aircraft Royal Mail has been using for daily inter-island deliveries in Orkney since 2023 and the platform Speedbird Aero has used to log nearly 40,000 commercial missions across operations in 14 countries.

The fixed route runs entirely over water, away from residential buildings, with the takeoff site at the Downtown Skyport on South Street and the landing zone at the Brooklyn Marine Terminal. Both sites are managed by NYCEDC. A certified Skyports pilot supervises every flight under FAA approval, and the operation coordinates with the NYPD and U.S. Coast Guard given the airspace’s complexity. Skyports has said the DLV-2 generates noise comparable to an electric toothbrush.

January’s Proof Of Concept Set The Operational Baseline

The yearlong program is built on a two-week proof-of-concept run in January 2026, when the same aircraft completed 135 flights, covered 151 miles (243 km), and transported 252 pounds (114 kg) of dummy cargo with a 96 percent completion rate even through winter weather over open water.

The total distance flown in that two-week window would have required up to 660 vehicle miles (1,062 km) and 40 gallons (151 liters) of gas. The 12-month version is designed to test whether those proof-of-concept numbers hold across a full year of seasonal weather and operational wear.

Skyports Has Built A Real Middle-Mile Track Record Outside The U.S.

Skyports operates middle-mile drone delivery for Royal Mail across Scotland’s Orkney Islands and runs cargo missions to RWE’s offshore wind turbines in Germany’s Baltic Sea, with additional active medical programs for the Welsh Blood Service and AZ Turnhout in Belgium.

The New York trial extends that catalog into U.S. urban airspace for the first time. The 2024 partnership with the Port Authority followed a 2023 agency request for operators interested in making drone cargo delivery a reality in the region.

BVLOS In NYC Airspace Is Running On Existing FAA Waivers, Not Part 108

The Manhattan-Brooklyn route is operating under existing FAA waiver authority rather than any final BVLOS framework because the FAA’s Part 108 rule is still in rulemaking, and it won’t be finalized in time to govern the 12-month trial window when commercial flights begin today.

The Speedbird DLV-2 is Brazilian-manufactured. Under Part 108 as currently drafted, foreign-manufactured aircraft would need a bilateral UAS agreement between the U.S. and the country of origin to be eligible for airworthiness acceptance, and the U.S. has no such agreements in place. DJI warned during the comment period that the proposed country-of-origin language would ground most non-U.S. drones currently in commercial use. Skyports is flying the New York route under existing Part 107 waiver authority, including Speedbird’s own Part 107 BVLOS waiver and Part 375 Foreign Aircraft Permit, which is workable for the duration of this 12-month program. What happens to the next route, or to a permanent operation built on top of this one, depends on how the country-of-origin language fares in final rulemaking.

DroneXL’s Take

The aircraft matters more than the route here. The Speedbird DLV-2 has been carrying Royal Mail packages in Orkney since 2023, and now it starts daily commercial flights in controlled airspace next to JFK and LaGuardia approach traffic. DroneXL has tracked Skyports’ middle-mile expansion across the past year. We covered their cross-border Belgian medical trial last August. We covered the Skyways and Skyports partnership cutting RWE offshore wind supply runs from two hours to 26 minutes in October. Earlier this month, we reported on their automated DJI Dock 2 bridge surveys for HOCHTIEF in Germany. The pattern is consistent: build the operational record inside a tight constrained corridor with a proven aircraft platform, then scale.

The unanswered question this trial raises is regulatory, not operational. The DLV-2 is Brazilian-manufactured. Part 108 as drafted restricts airworthiness acceptance to U.S. production or to countries with specific bilateral UAS agreements, and the U.S. currently has none of those agreements in place. The New York route works under existing waiver authority for the next 12 months. What happens to a permanent commercial operation built on top of this trial depends on how the country-of-origin language fares in the final rule.

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford visited Manna’s Dublin headquarters on January 30, 2026, specifically to discuss European-U.S. regulatory alignment for drone delivery. Whether that engagement produces actual bilateral movement before the Manhattan-Brooklyn trial concludes in April 2027 is an open question, not a prediction.

Source: Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.