Drone News: DEXA Secures Nationwide BVLOS, DroneDeploy's Progress AI, Drone Pilot Finds Missing Girl

Welcome to your weekly UAS News Update. We have three stories for
you this week. First, DEXA secures a nationwide BVLOS waiver for
drone deliveries, DroneDeploy launches Progress AI, and a drone
pilot finds a missing girl in Wisconsin.





First up, U.S. drone delivery company DEXA has hit a major
regulatory milestone, securing a nationwide Beyond Visual Line of
Sight, or BVLOS, waiver from the FAA. This is a huge deal because
it allows the company to conduct autonomous delivery operations
across the country without needing visual observers on the ground
for every flight. This approval puts DEXA in an elite group
alongside giants like Amazon Prime Air, Wing, and Zipline, who
are all pushing the boundaries of commercial drone logistics.In
addition to this new BVLOS waiver, the company already holds a
Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, which legally allows them to
run a drone airline. They also have an airworthiness
certification for their DE-2020 delivery drone. Having all three
of these in place is the key to unlocking scalable, repeatable,
and, most importantly, profitable drone delivery services.
They're using their own U.S.-made aircraft and a
direct-to-consumer app called DEXA NOW. Next up, DroneDeploy has
just announced a new tool that called Progress AI, and it's
designed to completely automate construction progress tracking.
Instead of someone walking a site with a clipboard and manually
marking up drawings, this system uses AI to analyze data from
drones and 360-degree cameras to generate fast and reliable
progress reports. DroneDeploy claims the platform can deliver
reports with 95% accuracy within minutes of the images being
uploaded.One of the coolest features is its natural-language
interface. This works without needing a complex Building
Information Model, or BIM, which lowers the barrier to entry for
a lot of companies. Early users are already reporting great
results, with one project engineer saying they caught a framing
issue with a door install just by reviewing a walkthrough, saving
them days of rework. Progress AI is currently in early access and
is expected to be widely available in October as an add-on for
DroneDeploy customers. Last up, a real-world drones-for-good
story! A volunteer drone pilot in Milton, Wisconsin, is being
called a hero after he found a missing 4-year-old girl in a dense
cornfield. The girl, Lou Easton, is autistic, nonverbal, and
reportedly doesn't feel pain, which made her disappearance
incredibly urgent. With sunset approaching, her family feared she
had wandered into a nearby cornfield. That's when Rock County
officials called for aerial support.The hero of the day is Jeremy
Harring-Spoerl, a volunteer with Wisco Aerial and Ground
Services. He launched his DJI Matrice 30 drone and got to work.
In just 40 minutes, he spotted Lou deep in the cornfield and was
able to guide rescue teams directly to her location. She was
found safe and unharmed. This is a perfect example of why drones
are such incredible tools for search and rescue. A drone can
cover a massive area far more quickly than a ground team, and
thermal cameras can spot heat signatures that would be impossible
to see otherwise. Stories like this are a powerful reminder that
for every headline about drone bans, there are pilots out there
using this technology to save lives. A huge congratulations to
Jeremy for a job well done!Alright, and the team will be back
from Oshkosh next week, so no Live on Monday or Post flight this
coming week, but we’ll pick back up the following!
https://dronexl.co/2025/07/14/dexa-faa-bvlos-waiver-drone-deliveries/https://dronexl.co/2025/07/21/drone-hero-saves-missing-girl-wisconsin/https://dronelife.com/2025/07/22/dronedeploy-launches-progress-ai-to-automate-construction-tracking/