Pilot program now will be expanded to include more customers in the U.K.
Though FAA approval to launch drone delivery in the United States has been slow to come for the online retail giant Amazon, that fact has not stopped them from pursuing the possibilities of Prime Air elsewhere. Amazon completed its first Prime Air drone delivery in the U.K. on December 7, under a limited trial program involving only two beta customers, and has indicated that they will soon expand the pilot to more customers living within a few miles of its Prime Air fulfillment center in Cambridge.
Amazon has been working with the drone delivery technologies for several years now, asking the FAA for permission to test the Prime Air delivery service in 2014, as Innovative Retail Technologies reported. In its July 9, 2014 letter to the FAA, Amazon asserted that delivering packages by drones will one day be “as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today.”
The move to tech is not just a gimmick for Amazon, however; it could also be a big money-saver.According to a 2014 study by New York based ARK Invest, drone deliveries could be completed for as little as one dollar, just a fraction of the cost of current delivery services. The report also suggested that deliveries could arrive in as little as 30 minutes, making the service even more attractive in a marketplace already pressured by competition.
The test flight, heralded on Twitter by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, occurred on Dec. 7, involved an Amazon Fire TV device and a box of popcorn, and reportedly took about 13 minutes from the time of order placement to delivery using a quadcopter capable of carrying a five-pound package on line-of-sight path.
"Prime Air has great potential to enhance the services we already provide to millions of customers by providing rapid parcel delivery that will also increase the overall safety and efficiency of the transportation system," Amazon said, on its website.
Amazon announced the Prime Air service in July, and said that it will allow customers to select from thousands of items for drone delivery. While some obstacles still remain for a wide-scale rollout of drone delivery, including global regulations and standards, as well as weight and distance constraints that limit the products suitable for drone delivery, this marks a huge step forward for the online giant.
