It took nearly three hours to deliver the card game that morning. The marker was repositioned, the GPS was synced. The drone made a wobbly ascent and flew over the ground observer (referred to by the flight crew as a “crossing guard”), which was stationed in a truck on the road to meet FAA requirements of maintaining a visual line of sight on the drone. It hovered briefly over the target, then dropped the cardboard package from an altitude of about 10 feet.

The experience “was really disheartening,” the former employee says. “But it…