Amazon Prime Drone Delivery Takes Flight

After centuries of throwing around the phrase “the sky’s the limit,” Amazon is now taking this notorious saying more literally.

Amazon Prime is introducing the first wave of Amazon-Prime Air–a new innovative delivery service enabling customers to receive products via the help of specialized drones.

Founder and former CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, announced back in December of 2013 that the company was brewing up the logistics to provide a drone delivery service by the start of 2018. However, we see that the takeoff of this futuristic phenomenon is coming to us now in August of 2022. After a full decade of scientific research, aerospace engineering, and team collaboration, Amazon Prime-Air finally began to launch for a handful of lucky customers in the town of Lockeford, California.

Amazon will begin reaching out to 3,500 residents in Lockeford who have backyards easily accessible and safe for drone touchdown. Once these individuals are prompted to sign up for Prime-Air, they can begin to order everyday items–just like they usually do using the site. There will be products specifically tagged for Prime-Air deliveries that will be eligible for purchase at no additional customer cost. Once an order is placed and the drone is ready for take off, it will fly a couple hundred feet in the air to reach the customer’s house, lower down into the backyard to drop the package, and take back off to return to the shipping site.

Just when you thought Amazon Prime’s same-day delivery was a groundbreaking luxury that can’t be topped, Amazon claims that Prime-Air will deliver customers their ordered goods successfully within a span of only an hour. These test subjects in California will provide the company with feedback so
Amazon can use this data to improve upon the system before it expands to more locations.

With the delay of the initial Prime-Air release date, big-name competitors like Google, Walmart and even Dominos have been organizing sky-based delivery systems in the meantime. But Amazon claims that their technology is different. Amazon states that their drones are more specialized in sensing objects and obstacles during flight. After creating about two dozen prototypes, Amazon’s drones will be able to avoid other aircrafts, people, trees, pets, and other potential roadblocks.

Amazon is excited about their newest drone design, MK27-2. Its hexagonal structure provides stability, along with its 6 propellers designed to minimize high-wave frequencies. Despite their few cases of mis compliance with the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration), they will continue to record data at their crash testing sites in order to sift through and correct inefficiencies within the transit process.

Being a company that prides itself on customer satisfaction and efficiency, Amazon will aim to better their technological development driving the introduction of Amazon Prime-Air. Factors such as maximum package weight, estimated air travel time, and potential in-flight hazards will continue to be put into question as Amazon moves forward with their plan. All this talk about drone delivery has people questioning: “Will residents still need a Mailman by 2030? ”