How and where is Amazon testing its drones?







Amazon's goal for its new service, Prime Air, is to be able to deliver customers' orders of less than five pounds in less than 30 minutes [1]. It believes this service will be up-and-running in about 4-5 years [2]. But with all that trouble from the FAA, how are they coming along?

Last month the Federal Aviation Administration, gave Amazon the go-ahead to test its drones in the USA. Some of the restrictions the FAA has put on Amazon's drone-flights include: the drones must be piloted by FAA-authorized pilots, the drones can't fly higher than 400 feet or over densely populated areas, and the drones must remain in the pilot's sight at all times. [3] In other words, the FAA doesn't seem to be catching up with the times.

In one instance, it took six months for Amazon to get permission from the FAA to test a certain drone, and by the time they received the permission, the drone model was obsolete. In most other countries where Amazon is testing drones, it takes only a few weeks to get such permission. Not surprisingly, Amazon has turned its focus more toward testing in other countries rather than in its native one. For example, in Canada, drone pilots don't have to be licensed, and the drones don't have to remain in the pilots' line-of-sight. Amazon now tests some of its flights in a secret site in British Columbia near the U.S. boarder. [4]

If the U.S. will ever be a major drone-developer, provider and consumer the FAA will have to react more quickly than it is now. It will have to look forward, not just upward, because there's no other way to envision the future and plan for its inevitable coming.

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