A Chinese Company Now Delivers Snacks to the Great Wall Using Drones

The outlet said that tourists could scan a code near the Badaling section of the wall, about 50 miles northwest of Beijing’s city center, to order sandwiches, ice cream, sun umbrellas, and emergency medication.

A drone with the goods flies from a nearby hotel rooftop to a watchtower on the Great Wall, where the app users can receive it, per CNN.

Delivery time is short — just about five minutes, CNN reported.

Delivery by air is rapidly gaining traction in China.

News of the Great Wall delivery drones comes shortly after China tested its largest unmanned cargo aircraft to date on August 11 in its southwestern Sichuan province, according to state media CCTV.

The report stated that the plane, with a wingspan of 52.8 feet, could carry 4,400 pounds of load.

These are all part of China’s latest push to boost its “low-altitude economy,” which refers to economic activities that take place in airspace 0.6 miles above the earth’s surface, per the South China Morning Post.

The country’s air regulator forecasts that the “low-altitude economy” could be worth $279 billion by 2030, according to Reuters.

It is driven by unmanned aerial vehicles such as delivery drones, as well as crewed commercial air taxis.

There were 1.87 million unmanned aerial vehicles registered in China as of June this year, the SCMP reported, citing data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.

In April, the SCMP reported that the drone company Phoenix Wings had started a commercial cargo drone route to speed up the deliveries of goods between Shenzhen and Zhongshan, a 43-mile stretch in southeastern China.

The low-cost delivery service costs $5.60 per order and can be completed within 45 minutes, cutting delivery time by nearly an hour, per the SCMP.