[BurningFrog]

With thousands of drones crossing the city sky, there would have to be some kind of system to organize that traffic, both to minimize collisions and sound pollution.

It's not hard to imagine how systems like that could be organized.

It's also important to consider how many road vehicle trips this would replace.

[kwhitefoot]

I don't care how it is organized, I just don't want them all flying over me. Living near such a distribution centre would be like living next to an airport unless there are regulations enforced that they ascend vertically so high that they cannot be heard.

How many road trips would it replace? Drones capable of carrying a 5 kg payload over any distance are fairly big. The DJI Matrice 600 Pro for instance weighs 15 kg and is over a metre across. It has a hover time of only 18 minutes. Maximum speed is 65 kph so its round trip range is about 20 km.

A small electric van can easily carry a hundred such packages and has an empty weight of roughly one hundred times that of the drone.

Presumably the drones used for deliveries would have to be much more robust and have much longer ranges, both of which would make them heavier.

So 100 drones replace one van.

I'm sure there are huge holes in my analysis perhaps, you can improve it so that it shows that a substantial number of road trips would be replaced without filling the sky with drones.