Amazon’s Drones Are Grounded

Amazon Prime Air owns drones. They want use them to deliver packages to their customers. Amazon selected two cities, Lockford in California and College Station in Texas to test the concept. Amazon made several deliveries, but only flew their drones over private land.

However, when Amazon Prime Air tried to cross public areas, the Federal Aviation Authority stepped in and blocked Amazon from flying over roads or people without permission on a case-by-case basis, according to federal records. That has severely limited the number of homes they can reach. Amazon has asked the FAA to loosen those restriction, but the agency issued a new set of rules that rejected many of the company’s request.

Last week an Amazon representative told a College Station Chamber of Commerce meeting that Amazon drones have made a small number of deliveries to some costumers in the area, but was not specific according to “The Information.”

What happened?

Amazon’s delivery drone is known the MK27-2 and weights about 80 pounds empty. It can carry packages weighing up to 5 pounds. This done is much heavier than drones used by Alphabet’s Wing and WalmartWMT
partners Flytrex and Zipline. Alphabet’s Wing has more than 300,00 deliveries for partners such as Walgreens and DoorDash in the U.S., Australia and Finland according to the company. Walmart’s drones have delivered more the 6,000 items, including paper towels and rotisserie chickens. The FAA has stricter regulations for heavier drones. Both Alphabet’s Wing and Walmart drones weigh about 10 to 40 pounds when empty.

FAA generally permits the latter two companies to cross over roadways, according to FAA records quoted by “The Information.” The FAA exemptions issued to Alphabet’s Wings and Walmart’s partners state that companies are permitted to “overfly roadways in a transitory manner.” However, Amazon was enjoined from flying over roadways “unless otherwise approved by the administration.”

“The Information” notes that Amazon Prime Air has a spotty record with the FAA. The Company’s drones have crashed at least eight times during tests. In at least two of the crashes, the FAA said Amazon moved crash evidence before regulators could inspect. Amazon has said that no one has been injured as a result of a flight test.

Until recently, despite restrictions, Amazon continued to hype the prospects for Amazon Prime Air. “The Information” quotes David Carbon, a vice president of Amazon Prime Air, telling reporters that Amazon aimed to deliver 500 million packages annually by drone by the end of the decade.

POSTSCRIPT; Drones speed up delivery and customers want their purchases fast. I think we should get the latest widget from Amazon by a safer delivery method. Amazon already manages deliveries within a day for some products and often beats their own delivery dates. Amazon has forced faster delivery service for the whole industry.