The company's Flight Forward subsidiary plans to use the approval to deliver packages to hospital campuses, with potential to expand to other services later. It's the first time the Federal Aviation Administration has granted such broad approval to a company to operate a fleet of drones as an airline.

The approval is a milestone in commercial drone delivery, with companies including Amazon, Uber and Google parent Alphabet, under its Wing Aviation unit, racing to add unmanned aircraft to their fleets to save on costs and deliver goods faster.

Wing is planning to start trials of consumer goods delivery by drones with Walgreens and with UPS rival FedEx in Christiansburg, Virginia, this month. Approvals for some tests, unlike UPS' broad certification, are limited to small areas, and restrictions remain about flights over densely populated areas.