BVLOS milestone: Windracers gains approval for first UK – Norway cargo drone route
September 26, 2025
British cargo drone manufacturer Windracers has become the first company authorised to fly a civil unmanned aircraft across international borders, linking the Shetland Islands with Norway in a single beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) flight.
It might sound niche: one route, one aircraft, one company. But in reality, this is a line in the sand for how regulators and industry can work together to bring autonomous aviation into the mainstream.
BVLOS drone flights take a leap forward
The approval, granted by both the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and Norway’s Luftfartstilsynet, allows the Windracers ULTRA heavy-lift drone to fly BVLOS from Tingwall Airport in Shetland to Haugesund Airport on Norway’s west coast.
Windracers will fly the ULTRA drone over the North Sea, crossing the Scottish/Polaris Flight Information Region boundary and into Norwegian airspace. Temporary danger areas will form a controlled corridor, effectively carving out the first international drone flight path between the two countries.
For the global UAS sector, it’s a symbolic breakthrough: proof that drones can move beyond domestic trials and start to integrate with cross-border aviation in Europe.
The approval process wasn’t straightforward. Windracers shared that a range of challenges had to be overcome: safety, liability, international obligations and even environmental mitigations. Working with both regulators, approvals focused on how best to accommodate these within the existing regulatory framework.
“Our airspace regulation team rose to the challenge by enabling an airspace change request through smart use of existing structures and regulatory processes,” says Jon Round, Head of Airspace, Air Traffic Management & Aerodrome Airspace at the UK CAA. “Innovation isn’t always about new technology or future frameworks—it can also mean reimagining how current systems can be applied.”
Norway’s aviation authority is equally bullish. Director General Lars E. de Lange Kobberstad said the mission shows how drones can “strengthen preparedness, protect the environment and improve accessibility—while keeping safety as our top priority.”
Windracers ULTRA: a cargo drone built for real missions
At the heart of the operation is the Windracers ULTRA, a twin-engine platform that can carry up to 150 kilograms of cargo for 1,000 kilometres. It’s not just a prototype: ULTRA has already carried out defence special operations, geological and wildlife surveying, remote parcel and medical deliveries, and precision aerial drops of supplies using parachutes.
“Many assume the autonomous air cargo industry is still years away,” says CEO Simon Muderack. “Windracers, with the support of the UK and Norway CAAs, is affirming that it is here today.”
One of the most inspiring use cases for ULTRA is delivering essential supplies and medicines to communities in rural Africa – the impetus for Windracers founder Stephen Wright setting up the company. Working towards this, Windracers has set up a base in Malawi and expects to begin flying in Africa later this year.
“Malawi has a lot of advantages,” Wright told AGN earlier this month. “It’s quite high up, which is a good test for the aircraft. The climate is benign. It has all the classic logistics challenges: remote locations, long distances, lack of infrastructure. But it’s also secure and stable. From a legal and regulatory point of view, they’re probably the leading edge in Africa.”
The projects the ULTRA has been involved in to date are wide-ranging. Having been founded in 2017, the MK1 aircraft took its first flight in late 2020, carrying medical supplies from Cornwall to the Isles of Scilly.
Since then, Royal Mail has used it to take deliveries to remote Scottish islands, the Royal Navy has been testing the aircraft from a carrier at sea, and the British Antarctic Survey has used it to map parts of Antarctica previously out of reach to researchers.
A small step for Windracers, a giant leap for BVLOS cargo drones
The Shetland–Norway flight isn’t just about one corridor; it’s about setting a precedent. If regulators can make BVLOS work across borders here, there’s little to stop similar routes linking island communities, serving offshore installations, or even providing disaster relief supply lines in hard-to-reach areas.
For the wider industry, the message is clear: International integration of drone cargo is possible now, not in a distant future.
In the US, the FAA has issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM), establishing Part 108, which is intended to provide a structured path for BVLOS operators. The draft rule has received some pushback from companies like DJI, which say that the rule, as it stands, could exclude some existing drone models, especially those from foreign manufacturers.
In Europe, EU Regulations 2019/947 and 2019/945 provide a harmonised baseline for BVLOS, but flights must still be cleared on a case-by-case basis, satisfying risk assessments such as SORA. Specific countries have trialled BVLOS operations in national corridors, but Windracers is the first to establish an international corridor between two countries.
Across the industry, ad hoc exemptions and waivers are slowly being replaced by standardised regulation. Regimens are moving towards classifying operations by risk, and efforts are underway to reconcile airspace rules to accommodate UAS traffic.
There’s still a mountain to climb, but Windracers has taken a significant first step.
