Food Delivery Drone Catches Fire After Landing on Power Lines

One of Alphabet’s Wing drones attempting to make a food delivery on Wednesday ended up catching fire after landing on power lines.

As The Verge reports(Opens in a new window), the drone was on its way to make a food delivery in Brisbane, Australia when something went wrong. According to a Wing spokeswoman speaking to The Age(Opens in a new window), the drone was attempting to carry out a “precautionary controlled landing,” but “came to rest on an overhead power line.”

Electricity company Energex sent out a crew to deal with the drone, which left over 2,000 people without power for a couple of hours during retrieval. According to Energex spokesman Danny Donald, “It landed on top of 11,000 volts and whilst it didn’t take out power, there was voltage tracking across the drone and the drone caught fire and fell to the ground … So we didn’t actually have to get the drone off, as such, it actually caught fire and incinerated itself.”

Energex believes this is the first time such an incident has occurred. Meanwhile Wing apologized and is now “conducting a review” to try and figure out why the drone didn’t spot and avoid the power lines as it descended. Could it simply be a case of human error, or the drone’s navigation system not registering the power lines were there? Hopefully Wing decides to share its finding publicly.

The Best Grocery and Household Delivery Services for 2022