It has been announced that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) has given Amazon the ability to deliver packages via drone to an expanded distance including “beyond the visual line of sight” which has stopped the company from delivering to more remote destinations during its explosive growth in the last decade.
What does this mean for every day folks including Southern Marylanders? Most importantly, Amazon pilots can operate drones remotely without seeing the destination. This could be a pro and a con.
Delivery could be faster and more efficient or it could land in your neighbor’s yard. Compounding that with privacy issues, especially in heavily wooded areas, this could be a godsend or another delivery system that never hits the mark.
While Amazon is planning to immediately scale its operations in College Station, Texas in an effort to reach customers in more densely populated areas, it also says it will allow Prime Air to further expand drone deliveries and lays the foundation to safely scale operations to more locations in the U.S. [1]
According to apnews.com, “Businesses have wanted simpler rules that could open neighborhood skies to new commercial applications of drones, but privacy advocates and some airplane and balloon pilots remain wary.” [2]
Amazon has fought for this permission for years and finally received approval from the FAA after developing a strategy that ensures its drones could detect and avoid obstacles in the air.
Furthermore, the company said it submitted other engineering information to the FAA and conducted flight demonstrations in front of federal inspectors. Those demonstrations were also done “in the presence of real planes, helicopters, and a hot air balloon to demonstrate how the drone safely navigated away from each of them.”[2]
By the end of the decade, the company has a goal of delivering 500 million packages by drone every year. [2]
This begs a few questions, however. Will the client (us) be able to pick the delivery method? How efficient and reliable are these drones? Will this cause further chaos with the FAA in more important matters like travel or privacy? How will this impact the jobs of delivery drivers? All of these questions have not quite been answered or even addressed properly.
As technology progresses, we eventually must kneel to it. If this is the future, should we embrace it? Or should we remain wary as the aforementioned pilots?
It shouldn’t impact this area for at least a year or so (depending on the success or lack thereof), but that gives us some time to chew on the meat of the questions.
Do you want faster access to your deliveries through the drone process? Would it help you or your business? Leave your comments below!
Contact our news desk at news@thebaynet.com
Citation: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/transportation/amazon-drone-prime-air-expanded-delivery-faa-approval [1]
https://apnews.com/article/amazon-drone-delivery-faa-texas-41e663b3fcc25f5190b982c0963f646d [2]
