Wing’s first move into Washington state surfaced at a Tacoma building counter rather than in a press release. A permit filed on behalf of Walmart and Alphabet-owned Wing would turn parking spaces at the Walmart Supercenter at 1965 S. Union Ave. into a drone delivery hub, and it is sitting in the city’s screening and intake process.
Neither company has named Washington as a market. Wing and Walmart published expansion lists in January and again in June, and the Pacific Northwest was on neither one. This filing is the first public evidence that Puget Sound is in the plan.
The timing is the part worth noticing. Seven weeks before the application went in, the FAA signed the national environmental finding that lets a delivery operator skip the metro-by-metro study Wing filed for Atlanta, Houston and Central Florida. Washington’s attorney general was among the officials who asked the agency not to sign it.
The Permit Covers Fencing and Storage at a South Tacoma Walmart
The applicant describes the work as “the installation of fencing and storage for drone delivery operations” at the existing Supercenter, city officials confirmed. Wing calls these sites nests. Its FAA filings in other metros authorize up to 24 aircraft per nest, each serving a radius of about six miles (9.7 kilometers)…