Terra Drone Arabia wins Hajj's first medical-drone delivery permit

Terra Drone is a Tokyo-headquartered drone and air-mobility group: industrial services such as surveying, inspection and agriculture (3,000+ cumulative projects), UTM software live in ten countries through subsidiaries including Belgium's Unifly, and a Saudi unit, Terra Drone Arabia, serving the Middle East and Africa.

Terra Drone bet a first-of-kind GACA permit — earned by the 2025 Hajj pilot nobody else had flown — would make holy-site medical delivery a repeatable drone business.

In June 2025 Terra Drone Arabia ran the first drone-based medical delivery project in Hajj history: with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Health and medical-logistics company NUPCO, it flew blood and medicines between Mina and Arafat, sites where ground traffic turns urgent trips into hours. In May 2026 that pilot became a first: GACA issued its first operational permit for limited drone-based delivery of medicines and medical logistics within the holy sites to Terra Drone Arabia.

During Hajj 2025 (June 4–9), Terra Drone Arabia acted as lead operator and technology partner: DJI Matrice 350 RTK drones carried temperature-controlled payload boxes of blood and medicines, Unifly's UTM tracked the beyond-visual-line-of-sight flights, and deliveries that previously took over 90 minutes by road arrived in under six minutes. For Hajj 2026 (May 25–29), GACA's first-of-kind operational permit — granted under Saudi Vision 2030's aviation-localization push — covered Terra Drone Arabia's limited medical-drone deliveries in the Makkah holy sites, and the company again served as lead operator and technology partner with NUPCO.

GACA said the permit built on the previous year's pilot and supported the Aviation Program's goals; Terra Drone said the 2026 season moved the project from proof-of-concept and initial operations into real deployment. The company described the permit as unprecedented for a specific drone operation and as the legal and safety framework for high-density, low-altitude medical flights over crowded holy sites, and said it will keep pushing drones into Saudi healthcare, infrastructure and energy.

Ground transport between Mina and Arafat during Hajj took 90 minutes or more, and Terra Drone Arabia showed blood and medicines could arrive in under six minutes by air (Terra Drone, 2025-06).

GACA had no precedent for permitting drone medical delivery, so the first operator able to run the operation safely inside the holy sites defined the regulatory template (Saudi Gazette, 2026-05-25).

The 2026 permit was explicitly granted on the strength of the previous year's pilot operations, rewarding the operator that had already flown the mission (GCC Business News, 2026-05).

Hajj repeats every year with over two million pilgrims, so a first-of-kind holy-site permit is a recurring, licensable market rather than a one-off contract (Terra Drone, 2026-06).

A first-of-kind permit goes to the operator that already proved the operation: the 2025 Hajj pilot, not regulatory lobbying, is why GACA's first medical-drone permit was Terra Drone Arabia's to hold.

Terra Drone says Terra Drone Arabia operated as lead operator and technology partner with NUPCO through Hajj 2026, moving from proof-of-concept to deployment under GACA's first medical-drone delivery permit — what the company calls an unprecedented authorization. GACA framed the permit as support for Vision 2030 and aviation localization, and Terra Drone says it will expand beyond medical logistics into Saudi infrastructure and energy. The operation's long-run economics, and whether the permit extends beyond the Hajj season, remain open questions.