Zipline built its reputation — and the commercial drone delivery industry’s most important early proof of concept — on a fixed-wing aircraft that flies at speed and drops a padded package to the delivery zone from cruise altitude. The approach is fast, operationally simple, and well-suited to the medical logistics use case that made Zipline’s African operations so significant. It is also limited: packages arrive in a drop container, the delivery zone requires open space, and fragile or liquid payloads are constrained by the physics of the landing.

In April 2023, Zipline announced a second platform that addresses those limitations with a fundamentally different approach. Platform 2 uses a larger fixed-wing aircraft as a carrier — flying at altitude above the delivery zone — from which a small autonomous device called Zip descends on a tether to deliver a package to a precise location. The Zip hovers over the delivery zone, lowers the package to within a few centimetres of the target point, and returns to the aircraft before the carrier continues to the next delivery.

What the Zip does

The Zip is a small battery-powered VTOL device that attaches to the underside of the Platform 2 carrier aircraft. When the carrier reaches the delivery zone, the Zip detaches, descends autonomously using its own rotors and sensors, and positions itself above the target. The package is then lowered on a short tether to the delivery point — a surface as small as a doorstep or a specific location within a garden — before the Zip retracts the tether and returns to the waiting carrier aircraft above.

The system combines the speed advantage of fixed-wing flight in the carrier phase with the precision and placement control of a winch delivery in the final approach. The carrier aircraft does not need to land or hover — it maintains cruise flight at altitude while the Zip carries out the delivery below. After the Zip returns and reattaches, the carrier continues to the next delivery point with its remaining Zip units.

What changes operationally

The most significant operational change from Platform 1 to Platform 2 is the delivery zone requirement. Platform 1’s drop delivery needs open space — typically measured in metres — for the package to land without hitting obstacles. The Zip’s tether-lowering approach can place a package on a surface the size of a doorstep, a small balcony, or a specific point within a residential garden. The proportion of addresses that are physically deliverable increases substantially.

The payload constraint also changes. Platform 1’s drop delivery, while suitable for robust medical products and packaged goods, excludes fragile items and liquids that cannot tolerate landing impact. The Zip’s lowering mechanism enables delivery of a much broader range of payloads — including food, pharmaceuticals in glass containers, and other items whose physical integrity is required after delivery.

The carrier’s operating range and capacity

Platform 2’s carrier aircraft is larger than Zipline’s Platform 1 fixed-wing aircraft, reflecting the additional payload capacity required to carry multiple Zip units. The carrier is designed to make multiple deliveries per flight — visiting several delivery zones sequentially before returning to the hub. This hub-and-spoke operational model, combined with the precision of the Zip’s delivery, is designed to serve residential delivery at higher density than Platform 1’s single-delivery-per-flight approach.

Zipline has publicly described Platform 2 as capable of operating at lower noise levels than a conventional delivery drone, partly because the carrier remains at altitude during the Zip’s descent phase. The acoustic footprint at ground level is reduced compared to a multirotor hovering directly over the delivery zone — a meaningful operational consideration given the community acceptance challenges that noise has created for other operators.

The deployment context

Platform 2 was announced in 2023 with deployment initially in US markets, adding to Zipline’s existing African healthcare operations and US pharmacy and retail programmes. The new system represents Zipline’s positioning for the residential delivery market that Wing and other multirotor operators have developed — but approached from the direction of a company with the deepest operational track record in commercial drone delivery of any operator globally.

The platform’s design reflects lessons from years of Zipline’s African operations: the importance of delivery precision, the value of payload flexibility, the commercial need to serve diverse retail categories beyond medical products, and the operational requirement to serve residential addresses at the density and precision that consumer expectations demand.