Sorry about the typo. I guess I was thinking of Zaire, Afghanistan, Bosnia, (and that's just recent history) of parachuting food in. Maybe I've seen too many WWII movies, but seems to be that would have been better than nothing.
Perhaps you're right - maybe that's an artifact of our age - imagine the news coverage if some pallets injured or killed some of the survivors.
You can't precision drop loads from an aircraft at high altitudes - the wind blows things all over the place.
You really can't do it over a city, because the pallets tend to cave in roofs, heads, shelters, that sort of thing.