Manna Air Delivery is launching drone delivery from two new bases in east Tulsa this week, one at The Shops at Alameda near 21st Street and Sheridan Road and one behind Plaza Santa Cecilia at 2160 S. Garnett Road. A third base, near 31st Street and Garnett Road, is due in the coming weeks. The expansion lands eight weeks after Manna opened its first full-scale US base on Cherry Street on August 12, and two weeks after it and the Tulsa Fire Department presented a drone defibrillator pilot.
Residents within two miles of each new base can order from Sr Lucas, Baga Sushi and Cakes & Churros through the Manna app. Each base has “the capacity to complete thousands of deliveries each week,” CEO Bobby Healy said. They launch with three aircraft apiece, flying noon to 8 p.m., Wednesday through Saturday by FOX23’s account.
Manna Goes From East Tulsa Permit Filings to Launch in Six Weeks
Manna filed city permit applications for all three east Tulsa sites on August 25, the Tulsa Flyer reported, and two of them launch this week, six weeks later. The third, in a lot east of Citi Trends at 11215 E. 31st St., awaits what News On 6 called final logistics.
Each new base copies the Cherry Street layout of three aircraft in a fenced operating area with an enclosed structure. Healy’s quote in FOX23’s report praised east Tulsa’s small-business scene, echoing the line Manna’s own release used for Cherry Street in August.
Dublin went the other way. Fingal County Council refused its Coolmine hub on May 19, a decision Manna answered with a Trinity College noise study, and by July 1 the company had announced it was pulling out of Dublin 15, Dublin People reported.
Healy’s ‘Thousands’ Only Adds Up on a Full Week With No Downtime
On Healy’s own figure of up to eight deliveries an hour per aircraft, three aircraft reach 2,000 a week only on the full seven-day, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. schedule: 3 × 8 × 12 hours × 7 days is 2,016. The launch schedule caps each base at 768.
News On 6 lists the launch days as Wednesday through Sunday rather than FOX23’s Wednesday through Saturday. The extra day lifts the ceiling to 960, still short of one thousand. Healy gave the eight-an-hour figure in 2025 for flights within three miles, crediting hot-swapped batteries, and DroneXL walked through those unit economics at the time. Tulsa’s two-mile radius means shorter trips, which could lift the rate. The same 2025 figures had one loader at an eight-aircraft base handling 25 to 30 deliveries an hour, which points the other way.
Every one of those ceilings assumes a three-aircraft fleet flying eight sorties every hour it is open. Manna head of operations Stuart O’Callaghan told KJRH on September 23 that the aircraft do not fly in heavy rain or in winds above 20 knots (23 mph, 37 km/h). Neither Manna’s Cherry Street release nor the FOX23 and News On 6 reports put a date on the full schedule. News On 6 says only that it comes as operations ramp up.
DroneXL’s Take
I’m for this rollout. Small bases in shopping-center parking lots, a two-mile radius, local restaurants, and six weeks from permit filings to launch: that is how drone delivery should arrive in a US city, and it is what Fingal’s planners refused Manna at Coolmine.
My problem is the unit Manna keeps selling Tulsa in. In July, Healy told a town hall he hoped to reach 20 to 30 bases, per News On 6. Now it is thousands of deliveries per base, a figure its launch hours can’t reach at Healy’s own rate. Manna’s newsroom, checked October 6, carries capacity figures and no Tulsa delivery count. Tulsans will judge the service by how many orders actually landed in their yards, and only Manna can publish that number.
Sources: FOX23, News On 6, Tulsa Flyer, Manna Air Delivery, KJRH, Dublin People
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
