Dive Brief:

• Alibaba Group’s online marketplace Taobao is testing drone delivery in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, flying shipments of ginger black tea weighing less than 12 ounces to 450 buyers. 
• The quadrocopter’s first delivery followed a preset flight path and took 37 minutes to go from a warehouse in the Beijing suburbs to the China World Trade Center. 
• Since the drones fly at altitudes of less than 100 meters, Alibaba is not required to report the test flights to aviation officials.

Dive Insight:

Alibaba’s Taobao, the largest online retailer in China, is conducting a three-day trial of remote-controlled drone delivery in the country’s three largest cities, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The quadrocopters will land outside residential buildings, where couriers will meet them to pick up boxes of tea for final delivery.

In the United States, Amazon, Google and UPS have expressed interest in launching drone deliveries, but a rule proposed by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) would restrict unmanned aircraft to altitudes of less than 400 feet and require drones to remain within sight of a licensed operator.