Campus Drone Delivery Economics: Why Do Flying Parcels Still Struggle to Pay Off?

Researchers assessed batched flights to staffed reception, batched flights to smart lockers and individual deliveries to controlled building terminals. Their five-year financial model connects the receiving arrangement with staffing, delivery capacity and the timing of battery purchases.

Getting a parcel closer to a student's building can save a walk across campus, but providing that convenience by drone brings expenses that delivery fees must cover. Aircraft purchases, receiving facilities, staffing and replacement batteries all influence whether a service can recover its investment. Research examining a university campus in Guangxi, China, finds that smart lockers improve the financial outlook, but the proposed service still needs more paying customers or lower costs.

The paper, "Service Design and Investment Recovery in Campus Drone Delivery," published in Sustainability, compares three ways of organising the final journey from a parcel hub to a receiving point. Researchers assessed batched flights to staffed reception, batched flights to smart lockers and individual deliveries to controlled building terminals. Their five-year financial model connects the receiving arrangement with staffing, delivery capacity and the timing of battery purchases.

Two weeks of observation in May 2026, site visits and discussions with merchants, customers, delivery staff and university departments informed the analysis. The baseline assumes 1,200 prospective paid orders daily, a fee of CNY 4 per successful delivery and 240 operating days annually. These figures describe a proposed service rather than proven customer demand, making the results conditional projections rather than evidence of an already profitable operation.

Smart Lockers Improve Returns but Leave an Investment Gap

The two batched designs use three aircraft carrying 16 parcels per flight, giving each arrangement a scheduled capacity of 1,440 deliveries daily. Both can accommodate the assumed 1,200 orders and generate annual revenue of CNY 1.152 million. The building-delivery design uses 20 aircraft carrying one parcel per flight, limiting daily completions to 700 despite its larger fleet.

All three baseline designs produce negative net present values, a measure that accounts for upfront investment, future cash flows and the time value of money. Using a 10% discount rate, the five-year values are approximately minus CNY 686,000 for staffed reception, minus CNY 419,000 for lockers and minus CNY 9.254 million for building delivery. None recovers its initial investment within five years, even before discounting future cash flows.

Smart lockers generate a positive annual project cash flow of CNY 81,780 during the first four years, but those returns cannot recover the CNY 807,800 initial outlay within the evaluation period. Their advantage comes from changes in receiving work, including an assumed reduction of six dispatcher positions, with pilot staffing unchanged. Annual gross payroll savings of CNY 103,680 shrink to CNY 88,680 after additional locker maintenance, demonstrating why lower handling costs do not automatically produce a viable investment.

Paying Customers and Reliable Capacity Determine Recovery

At CNY 4 per delivery, lockers need at least 1,360 paid completions daily when replacement batteries are paid for at their usage thresholds. That requirement occupies roughly 94.4% of scheduled capacity, leaving just 80 daily delivery slots above the recovery threshold. Better aircraft availability cannot solve a shortage of paying customers, and strong demand cannot generate revenue from deliveries the service cannot complete.

A separate calculation grouping payments at year-end puts the locker threshold slightly lower, at 1,355 daily deliveries. At the original volume of 1,200, this calculation requires a fee of approximately CNY 4.46 for lockers or CNY 4.72 for staffed reception to recover investment. The model does not establish whether customers would continue purchasing the service at those higher prices, so demand needs testing alongside the proposed fee.

Battery purchasing dates can change the investment decision when the financial margin is narrow. At full scheduled capacity, moving battery payments from year-end to their actual replacement thresholds turns staffed reception's small positive net present value into a small negative value. Lockers retain a positive result at full capacity, showing why procurement schedules belong in the financial assessment.

Real Cost Reductions Matter More Than Accounting Changes

Cutting receiving staff alone cannot close the baseline locker investment gap, because the payroll savings needed exceed the entire eligible pilot and dispatcher wage bill. Common overhead reaches CNY 780,000 annually, covering management, rent, utilities and communications, and represents about 80.6% of locker operating expenditure excluding batteries. These retained commitments explain why an efficient receiving system can still struggle financially.

At 1,200 paid deliveries daily and CNY 4 per delivery, the annual payment calculation requires an additional recurring cash reduction of approximately CNY 132,000 for lockers to recover investment. Shared premises or management could contribute if they genuinely reduce the operator's payments, but moving an unchanged expense between internal accounts creates no saving. External funding can improve the operator's position by transferring a payment obligation, with the expense remaining elsewhere in the delivery system.

Direct building delivery faces a much larger problem, with baseline replacement-battery expenditure of approximately CNY 4.959 million exceeding five-year delivery revenue of CNY 3.360 million. Carrying two parcels per flight allows the 20-aircraft fleet to handle all 1,200 daily orders and improves net present value to approximately minus CNY 6.839 million. Reducing that fleet to 18 aircraft narrows the deficit to about CNY 6.625 million, but leaves only 60 spare daily slots and still fails to recover investment.

Paid Pilots Can Test the Business Before Expansion

Even free replacement batteries leave the 20-aircraft, two-parcel building-delivery design with a negative net present value of CNY 3.687 million. Its remaining operating costs, receiving infrastructure and acquisition commitments require broader changes to the service or its revenue. Across the tested scenarios, price, paid volume and operating expenditure strongly influence the batched designs, and none of the individual changes tested makes direct delivery profitable.

The findings are specific to the campus assumptions, including local wages, receiving facilities, flight schedules and battery-use estimates. The short observation period does not establish demand across academic terms, and the model does not separately simulate weather disruption, downtime, fluctuating orders or uncertain battery degradation. The research evaluates the operator's financial return, without establishing environmental benefits or a universal advantage over ground delivery.

The researchers recommend longer paid pilots that record completed handovers, customer collection effort, staffing requirements and actual expenses before larger purchases proceed. Operators need to verify receiving arrangements, local operating permissions, achievable capacity and contractual payment obligations under the proposed service. Those records would help universities choose facilities and fleet sizes supported by real demand and costs.