Drones Take Flight!

Happy Wednesday - it's fall, y'all.

As some of you recall, I started collecting the FAA flight registry data on March 20th.

I leveraged Claude to craft a terminal prompt that downloads the publicly available registry.

The registry is a real-time document. I couldn't find anyone with historical figures. So I captured it myself.

This is Marble Institute of Technology's proprietary data. How neat is that? :)

Looking back, there are a few noteworthy findings in August.

The delivery drone category grew 17% month-over-month.

Zipline itself increased 18% month-over-month. (Read about Uber x Zipline's latest partnership here.) This jump for Zipline is its fastest acceleration recorded - something for us to watch moving forward.

Agriculture drones advanced 4% month-over-month.

And Seneca secured valid certificates for 47 tail numbers. The wildfire-fighting drone company announced a 5-year partnership with the Aspen Fire Protection District back in February.

I should note that the 47 tail numbers were previously recorded in the registry, but the change in status reflects the aircraft crossing from reserved to registered, the last administrative step before they can operate. Way to go, Seneca!

Passenger eVTOLs were unchanged. The air taxi industry is moving at a glacial pace.

The fastest-accelerating manufacturers include:

It's early days in the Aerial Economy, but something's afoot.

The momentum in delivery drones is accelerating.

Slowly, then all at once.

Message me if you'd like the full markdown file. It's technical, but fun to watch the trends take shape.