The city of Reno, Nevada and Flirtey have successfully completed their first flights under the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP).

The city of Reno and Flirtey conducted the first multi-drone delivery demonstration under the program, as a single Flirtey pilot operated multiple Flirtey UAS at the same time, and simulated the delivery of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in the presence of the FAA.

The flights were conducted under a regulatory waiver that allows multiple small UAS to be operated by one pilot.

“Flirtey just demonstrated deliveries with multiple drones per pilot for the first time, which is a major milestone toward scaling drone delivery nationwide,” says Flirtey Founder and CEO Matthew Sweeny.

“We’re excited to be working with our partners and the FAA to save lives and improve lifestyles with Flirtey’s drone delivery.”

The flights were conducted using Flirtey’s next-generation UAS, which was designed to carry heavier payloads for longer distances, so that medicine and commercial packages can be delivered quickly and more efficiently.

​Along with its desire to save lives, the city of Reno decided to partner with Flirtey to deliver AEDs to cardiac arrest patients to “pioneer a scalable model for commercial drone delivery.”

“The City of Reno is proud to partner with Flirtey, the FAA, and our local IPP partners to test drone delivery of AEDs to Washoe County residents,” says City of Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve.

“Public safety is our top priority, and the use of drones to provide life-saving AED technology to cardiac patients could reduce the number of deaths from cardiac arrest in northern Nevada.”

The leading cause of natural death in Reno, and the United States as a whole, is cardiac arrest. The city of Reno says that “for every minute that a cardiac arrest patient waits to receive defibrillation, their odds of survival decrease by about 10 percent per minute.”

The city of Reno says that using UAS to deploy AEDs “can increase the cardiac arrest survival rate of Washoe County residents from just 10 percent today, to approximately 47 percent.”