The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has approved the expansion of Amazon’s drone delivery program, and the company plans to scale up operations “immediately.”
The agency is requiring commercial drone pilots to maintain visual line of sight until technology is approved that allows drones to safely fly long distances beyond visual line of sight.
Amazon Announced The company’s new “detect and avoid system” was approved by federal regulators on Thursday.
“We are pleased that the FAA has granted Prime Air additional authorization to operate beyond visual line of sight drones, allowing us to serve even more customers by drone, effectively expanding and scaling our drone delivery operations,” company officials said.
“To obtain this permission, we developed BVLOS [beyond visual line of sight] “Our strategy includes on-board sense-and-avoid technology. We have spent years developing, testing, and refining our on-board sense-and-avoid systems to enable drones to detect and avoid obstacles in the air,” Amazon said.
One of Amazon’s main drone bases is College Station, TexasPrimeAir’s vice president, David Carbone, said the company will deliver customer orders within an hour with “minimal complexity.”
In a recent company announcement, executives said they will “effectively expand our operations in College Station using our current MK-27 drones to reach customers in more densely populated areas.”
a video Video posted to social media by College Station real estate agent Laura Cates shows the drone dropping off a package outside a home before crashing from the sky into the driveway.
Amazon drone delivery
Have you ever had a package delivered by drone from Amazon? pic.twitter.com/Oe9d0vg9pb
— WallStreetSilver (@WallStreetSilv) April 26, 2024
Amazon has a goal of delivering 500 million packages per year by drone by the end of the decade.
“We knew we needed to design a system that could serve densely populated areas and was safer than driving to the store,” the company said. “Developing these groundbreaking technologies took years of inventing, testing and refining, but following regulatory approval and cutting-edge technology, we are excited to begin a new chapter for Prime Air.”
