Amazon’s Prime Air Drone Delivery Fleet Gains FAA Approval for Trial Commercial Flights
upstart writes in with an IRC submission:
Amazon's Prime Air drone delivery fleet gains FAA approval for trial commercial flights - TechCrunch:
Amazon has been granted an approval by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that will allow it to start trialing commercial deliveries via drone, Bloomberg reports. This certification is the same one granted to UPS and a handful of other companies, and while it doesn't mean that Amazon can immediately start operating a consumer drone delivery service for everyone, it does allow them to make progress toward that goal.
[...] Ultimately, any actual viable and practical system of drone delivery will require fully autonomous operation, without direct line-of-sight observation. Amazon has plans for its MK27 drones, which have a maximum 5 lb carrying capacity, to do just that, but it'll still likely be many years before the regulatory and air traffic control infrastructure is updated to the point where that can happen regularly.
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