By Riley Martin
Imagine one day your walking home from school, and you hear a loud buzzing noise. Looking up, you see a drone landing in a nearby yard, it drops off a package and then flies away. Soon that might actually happen, because of Amazon’s new permit from the government, allowing it to use drones for commercial purposes.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced that they will soon begin Prime Air, their drone delivery service. For an employee to be qualified for the job of flying drones must have a private pilot’s licence and medical certification. The drones must stay within 400 ft of the ground and the pilot must be able to view the drone at all times. This program is the start of Amazon’s new initiative to make delivery faster and bring in more customers to their service.
Prime air is currently in development in the US, UK, Austria, France, and Israel. They will deliver packages of 5 or less pounds in under 30 minutes to nearby locations. According to Amazon, they are currently testing different drone designs, ranging in all shapes and sizes. Prime Air’s release was originally planed to be in 2019 but still there is no sign of them coming this year. We are hoping to see them in the near future.
References:
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Prime-Air/b?ie=UTF8&node=8037720011
https://www.faa.gov/news/updates/?newsId=82225
