In a letter to the FAA penned by John Nichols, the mayor of College Station, Texas—one of two locations where Prime Air began flying in 2022—on behalf of the city council he urged the regulator to deny a request that would more than double the service’s range. The mayor cited noise concerns from residents as the chief factor guiding the city’s position.

College Station has become a critical hub for Prime Air, which has struggled to get its drone delivery service off the ground. The city was intended to be one of two key launch markets in addition to Lockeford, California, but the latter service was shuttered in April after a less-than-stellar performance in a little more than its first year.

That leaves College Station as the sole market for Prime Air operations, and Amazon recently bolstered the service by adding on-demand delivery of prescription medications for the flu, asthma, pneumonia, and more. The e-commerce giant is also looking to bring drones to the Phoenix metro area in Arizona and has teased an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy.

Last year, Prime Air unveiled its MK30 drone, which is rangier, quieter, and more durable than its current MK27-2. To integrate the new model into its Texas fleet, the company submitted a draft supplemental environmental assessment to the FAA summarizing the MK30’s potential impacts on College Station residents.

Since the new model can fly in light rain and more extreme temperatures than the MK27-2, Amazon proposes operations 365 days per year, an increase from 260. Flights per day would increase from 200 to about 470 and would take place between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. CT, removing an FAA restriction limiting flights to daytime hours.

Under the proposal, the company’s operating area would expand from 43.7 to 174 square miles. The expansion to 43.7 square miles happened earlier this year, when the FAA granted Amazon approval to fly its drones where its pilots cannot physically see them. Comparable waivers have been handed out to competitors such as Zipline, Alphabet’s Wing, and UPS’s Flight Forward, similarly allowing those companies to expand their service areas through remote operations.

If approved, the lighter restrictions would allow Prime Air to fly more than 170,000 operations per year in College Station with the MK30, compared to 52,000 with its current model.

Nichols said that the city is excited to be one of the few in the U.S. to host a drone delivery service. But that came with a caveat.

“While the city is supportive of Amazon Prime Air’s efforts, we do not support their request in its entirety,” Nichols wrote. “Since locating in College Station, residents in neighborhoods adjacent to Amazon Prime Air’s facility have expressed concern to the city council regarding drone noise levels, particularly during takeoff and landing, as well as in some delivery operations.”

According to Nichols, residents “have continued” to voice concerns regarding Prime Air’s planned expansion, worrying that the noise will only worsen. The mayor added that the expanded service area could extend beyond the city’s commercial zoning district, which is intended to limit commercial spillover into residential neighborhoods.

“Due to the level of concern from residents, the city would ask to delay the increase in service levels relating to the number of deliveries, as well as the expanded operation days and hours, until additional noise mitigation efforts are implemented by Amazon Prime Air,” Nichols wrote.

Nichols did offer support, however, for the introduction of the MK30, which is expected to be 40 percent quieter than its predecessor. It is unclear whether the new drone would represent sufficient “noise mitigation efforts” in the city council’s eyes, though Nichols said it would have a “positive effect” on residents’ displeasure.

The comment period for the environmental assessment closed on Friday, and the city and Prime Air will now have to wait for the FAA’s decision. Amazon is also awaiting comments and a final decision on a draft environmental assessment for its planned Arizona service.

Should the proposed expansion be rejected, it would represent yet another blow for Prime Air, which so far has not delivered on former CEO Jeff Bezos’ prognostications more than a decade ago.

In that time, competitors such as Zipline and Wing have risen to the top of the young industry—each of those firms has completed multiple hundred thousands of drone deliveries, including outside the U.S.

Prime Air’s future prospects may be bolstered by the MK30, which promises to address some of the company’s problems: namely range, excessive noise, and limitations on deliveries in inclement weather.

Amazon is not the only drone delivery provider contending with unhappy customers. Earlier this month, a Florida man was arrested for shooting down a Walmart delivery drone he said was flying over his house.

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Amazon Prime Air on Thursday said it obtained FAA approval for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations, which refer to flights that cannot be directly observed by a human pilot. The company said its new permissions will allow it to immediately expand the delivery area for its MK-27 drone in College Station, Texas, one of two U.S. locations in which it began flying in 2022. Its other service, in Lockeford, California, was shut down in April.

As things stand, BVLOS authorization is considered the king of drone delivery approvals.

In lieu of a final rule on BVLOS flights—which the FAA has been developing for years but has not yet published—the agency awards temporary waivers to individual companies on a case-by-case basis. Some exemptions, called summary grants, allow a firm to piggyback off an approval given to another company if their technologies and business models are sufficiently aligned.

For those without BVLOS waivers, drone delivery areas are often limited to just a few square miles and require human observers, which can put a strain on operations.

Amazon said Prime Air engineers developed a BVLOS strategy that includes an onboard detect-and-avoid (DAA) system, which allows the company’s drones to autonomously dodge planes, helicopters, balloons, and other obstacles.

It shared with the FAA information about the system’s design, operation, and maintenance and conducted flight demonstrations in front of agency inspectors. After observing the technology in action and poring over test data, the regulator issued the approval.

Now, in lieu of human observers, remote drone pilots will oversee the aircraft while Prime Air DAA performs most of the work.

Amazon, which already dominates same- and next-day ground delivery, hopes to deliver 500 million packages per year by drone before the end of the decade. However, the company has been reluctant to provide delivery figures since it came out last year that its Lockeford service had completed just 100 deliveries after several months of availability.

This new exemption could change things. Prime Air in 2020 obtained an FAA Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, making it one of only five drone delivery companies to have obtained that approval. But a BVLOS waiver may allow it to truly compete with rivals such as Wing and Zipline, both of which received such permissions last year.

The company will start by ramping up in College Station. Later this year, it expects to begin deploying drones from hubs next to its same-day delivery site in Tolleson, Arizona, which is slated to be its next launch market. The idea is to be able to fulfill, sort, and deliver from a single location, strategically positioned to be as close to as many customers as possible.

Connections to nearby Amazon fulfillment centers will allow it to offer millions of items for same-day drone delivery, the company says. It has over 100 such facilities spread across the U.S. and more than 175 globally.

Next up for Prime Air will be adding further U.S. locations in 2025. The company is also planning an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy, where its drones will deliver from those larger fulfillment centers. It said it is working with regulators in both countries to introduce the service as soon as late 2024.

Simultaneously, Prime Air continues to hone the design of its new MK-30 drone, which will eventually replace the MK-27 in the U.S. and be the first Amazon drone flown in the U.K. and Italy. According to Amazon, it can fly twice as far as the company’s current model while emitting half as much perceived noise.

Prime Air’s chief competitor is Alphabet drone delivery subsidiary Wing, which as of May has completed more than 350,000 deliveries worldwide—including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in partnership with Walmart and Walgreens.

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Amazon has struggled to get Prime Air drone delivery off the ground, but the firm is hopeful it’s found an antidote.

The e-commerce giant on Wednesday announced that Amazon Pharmacy customers in College Station, Texas—one of two locations the company has been flying in since December—can now receive prescription medications via drone in less than an hour. Customers will have access to more than 500 medications treating common conditions such as the flu, asthma, and pneumonia.

“For decades, the customer experience has been to drive to a pharmacy with limited operating hours, stand in line, and have a public conversation about your health situation, or to wait five to 10 days for traditional, mail-order delivery,” said John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy. “With Amazon Pharmacy, you can quickly get the medications you need—whether by drone or standard delivery—without having to miss soccer practice or leave work early.”

The service has potential to benefit the nearly half of Americans who forgo healthcare due to inconvenience or high costs. Amazon declined to say whether it would expand beyond College Station. But the company also offers same-day pharmacy delivery in Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, Seattle, and Austin, Texas, priming those cities as future markets.

“We’re taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy. “That’s the time between when a patient feels unwell and when they’re able to get treatment. We’re working hard at Amazon to dramatically narrow the golden window from diagnosis to treatment, and drone delivery marks a significant step forward.”

Prime Air’s hexarotor drones fly between around 130 and 400 feet above ground level, which would not conflict with fixed-wing traffic but is still in the neighborhood of helicopters. Built-in sense-and-avoid technology uses sensors and cameras—which feed into a neural network trained to identify objects—to navigate around obstacles such as people, pets, power lines, or other aerial traffic.

Separately, Amazon made a trio of announcements, the most consequential being that its drones will arrive in the U.K., Italy, and another unnamed U.S. city outside California and Texas by late 2024, kicking off Prime Air’s international expansion. The company said it is working closely with regulators in the U.S., U.K., Italy, and the European Union to develop those services, and specific cities will be named in the coming months.

“The future has arrived in Italy,” said Pierluigi Di Palma, President of Italy’s National Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC). “Being chosen by a global player such as Amazon is further confirmation of the strategy pursued by ENAC to push for innovation of advanced air mobility in the aviation industry, creating a national ecosystem favorable to the safe development of new services. Italy’s experience will be an inspiration and support for safe operations in the rest of Europe.”

Baroness Charlotte Vere, the U.K.’s aviation minister, added that Amazon’s entry supports the country’s goal of making commercial drones commonplace by 2030. Early on, customers will be able to order thousands of items for Prime Air drone delivery, including household essentials, beauty products, and office supplies.

Amazon also unveiled the first photos of its MK30 drone, which will replace the company’s MK27-2 drones in the U.S. and will be the first model flown in the U.K. and Italy. The company said the MK30 can fly twice as far and produce half the perceived noise compared to its previous model.

Like the MK27-2, the new design flies autonomously, is equipped with proprietary sense-and-avoid technology, and will deliver packages up to 5 pounds within an hour. But the MK30 will be able to fly in light rain or hot or cold temperatures and deliver more precisely to congested landing zones, such as densely populated suburbs.

If that wasn’t enough buzz, Prime Air provided one more update. Moving forward, drones will be integrated into the company’s delivery network: In the U.K. and Italy, they’ll launch from Amazon fulfillment centers, beginning with one in each country. In the U.S., the drones will take off from same-day delivery sites, smaller versions of those facilities.

Deliveries in College Station and Lockeford, California—the company’s other U.S. market—are currently conducted out of standalone Prime Air Delivery Centers. Soon, drones will depart from the same buildings as the company’s delivery vans, which should help the e-commerce giant keep its ducks in a row.

The fulfillment and same-day delivery sites house items Amazon says are primed for drone delivery, such as cold medicines or AA batteries, Prime Air’s most popular request. The centers were also deliberately built to serve as many customers as possible, making them ideal hubs for drone delivery.

Wednesday’s announcements are the first updates Amazon has provided on Prime Air since May, when it revealed that its two services combined had made just 100 deliveries: a far cry from its goal of 10,000 by year’s end.

That figure pales in comparison to the thousands of U.S. drone deliveries made by Walmart and its partners—or hundreds of thousands in the case of one provider, Alphabet’s Wing, including its services in Australia.

Another Walmart partner, Zipline, is the world’s largest medical drone delivery provider. It has made more than 700,000 deliveries globally, including in Arkansas and Utah in the U.S.

How Pharmacy Delivery Will Work

Despite the Prime Air moniker, College Station residents do not have to be Prime customers to order drone delivery. They will, however, need to onboard with Prime Air and complete a yard survey, after which Amazon will ship them a QR Code delivery marker. Customers will need to position this manually on their doorstep or another location of their choice.

Eligible customers can select the option for “free drone delivery in less than 60 minutes” at Amazon Pharmacy checkout, for no additional charge. A pharmacist will then load the prescription onto the drone, which flies directly to the customer’s doorstep.

“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone. Speed and convenience top the wish list for health purchases.”

Once it arrives at the customer’s address, the drone lowers itself over the prepositioned QR Code. Onboard computer vision ensures the path of descent is clear before initiating the drop (literally—packages are released from 12 feet off the ground).

Amazon is one of a handful of FAA-approved air carriers—the others being Wing, Zipline, UPS Flight Forward, and Causey Aviation Unmanned, a longtime partner of Israeli drone delivery firm Flytrex—permitted to conduct commercial drone delivery operations in the U.S. under a standard Part 135 certificate. It’s the only firm authorized to operate drones weighing more than 55 pounds under that approval.

Zipline, which uses a parachute to make deliveries and will soon introduce a tether that lowers a small delivery “droid,” is the dominant player in medical drone delivery, with robust operations in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2016. The company is now growing its services in the U.S. with Walmart and received a lift from its recent FAA beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) approval.

Wing, arguably the most successful retail and restaurant drone delivery provider based on sheer volume, is now also exploring medical delivery in the U.K. and Ireland with partner Apian. Meanwhile, Germany’s Wingcopter and the U.S.’ Spright signed a deal to launch medical deliveries across the continental U.S.

Prime Air’s Progress

The success (or lack thereof) of Prime Air prescription drone delivery and its services abroad may depend on the e-commerce giant’s ability to quickly onboard customers. Wing, for example, also vets potential delivery addresses to ensure there is room for a drone to land, but it doesn’t require customers to initiate that process. It also does not need QR Codes or other infrastructure to be stationed at customers’ homes.

Another hurdle to overcome will be scale. According to CBS News, the company’s operation in Lockeford includes just eight drones, less than half the amount Wing deploys for its newly launched Dallas service. Prime Air’s drones are much bigger than the Alphabet subsidiary’s, which could make it more challenging to maintain a larger fleet.

One factor working in Amazon’s favor is its massive network of delivery infrastructure in the U.S. and worldwide. By integrating Prime Air drones into that latticework of facilities and positioning the aircraft closer to customers, the firm could unlock more demand and agility for its services

Like Wing, Zipline, and other large drone delivery players, Prime Air is backed by a war chest of funding, with the added benefit of being one of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ pet projects. The early returns are discouraging, but Prime Air likely won’t be grounded any time soon.

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Last week, the e-commerce giant told CNBC that its Prime Air drone delivery service—which currently serves a smattering of households in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas—has completed just 100 deliveries since launching in late December. Per internal company projections, the firm in January was targeting 10,000 deliveries by the end of 2023.

Now, that projection appears to be in peril. In Lockeford, a town of about 4,000, Prime Air employees said Amazon’s drones serve only two households, each less than a mile from the firm’s local delivery hub.

College Station, which has a population closer to 120,000, may provide more opportunities. But so far, Amazon has failed to capitalize on that market, too.

Amazon did not immediately respond to FLYING‘s request for comment.

There are a few potential drivers for the business’ struggles. Perhaps the largest is the regulatory hurdles it faces. 

Amazon, one of five drone firms to receive FAA Part 135 air carrier certification, would appear to be in a good spot. But those approvals come with major restrictions—in Amazon’s case, they include the ability to fly at night, over people and roads, or beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of a ground observer.

Those restrictions were cemented in November after the FAA rejected several of Amazon’s petitions to ease them. The decision reportedly came as a surprise—according to Prime Air employees, the firm had put up dozens of staffers in hotels in Pendleton, Oregon, home to one of its main test sites, with plans to move them to Lockeford and College Station last summer.

According to the FAA, Amazon did not demonstrate that the MK27-2—its latest drone model, a hexagonal design with six propellers and an onboard sense-and-avoid system—could safely operate near people. The drone’s 80-pound weight also places it outside the purview of the FAA’s Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems rule, muddying the regulatory waters further.

Still, Amazon soldiered on, launching its two services a month later. But soon after, Prime Air was hit with layoffs, and early reports implied less-than-stellar returns in Lockeford and College Station. Now we know exactly how Prime Air has fared: Five months into 2023, it has completed 100 deliveries, or about 1 percent of its goal of 10,000 deliveries this year.

The drone delivery industry was expected to move slowly—and so far it has. But if the rest of the industry is taking its time, Amazon is moving at a snail’s pace.

Currently, Zipline is the industry’s front-runner with 600,000 completed deliveries as of May. Alphabet’s Wing, perhaps the only drone firm that can rival Prime Air’s corporate backing, told FLYING it has made more than 330,000. And DroneUp, the Walmart drone delivery partner that cut jobs last week, said it has made 110,000 deliveries, including 6,000 just last month.

In other words, even if Amazon were on track to hit its 2023 delivery target, it would still fall far short of its key rivals. That’s a sobering outlook given former CEO Jeff Bezos’ initial projections of dominance in 2013.

So how have these firms accomplished what Amazon (so far) could not? The answer lies in regulatory approvals.

Zipline, for example, owns the FAA’s most expansive air carrier approval to date—granted after the agency determined the safety of the firm’s acoustic detect-and-avoid system—allowing it to operate BVLOS and over people. That means its drones can fly where Amazon’s cannot, and the company has leveraged those permissions into robust services in Africa, Asia, and the U.S. 

Zipline also recently secured $330 million in funding to support the launch of P2, its new delivery system that adds a flexible delivery “droid” to the network. The droid will enable more precise deliveries and easier loading of cargo at restaurants and other launch sites.

Regulatory approvals have also given a lift to Wing. Under its Part 135 certificate, the firm can fly BVLOS and over people, which has opened up new U.S. routes and expanded its customer base. That has enabled small services in Virginia and Texas to go with Wing’s complex operations in Australia, where it has partnered with DoorDash and others.

Meanwhile, DroneUp, which flies within a 1.5-mile delivery radius with Walmart under FAA Part 107, is looking to expand its range with new technologies acquired via partnerships. Those include a drone air traffic control system and an autonomous flight system that could help prove to the FAA that its operations are safe for BVLOS.

Why, you may ask, has Amazon been unable to secure these approvals? While the company has gone through several iterations of its drone—including the soon-to-be-released MK30—none have swayed the FAA’s confidence in Prime Air’s safety record.

Several high-profile accidents involving Amazon drones have been reported at the firm’s test facilities, including one in Pendleton that sparked a 20-acre brush fire. Accidents are part of any drone company’s journey, as it turns out. But they appear to be chronic for Prime Air, which has drastically limited its operations.

Another issue appears to be a lack of demand, though it’s unclear what’s causing it. CNBC reported that Prime Air’s Lockeford service has just a handful of signups despite Amazon’s claim that thousands of people “have expressed interest.” The firm says it has been communicating with potential users directly, and some customers even said they were offered gift cards as an incentive.

It could be that the low demand is a symptom of Prime Air’s chosen markets. Lockeford residents, for example, said the drones could startle farm animals in the heavily rural area. Yet Zipline, Wing, and others also fly in rural areas and have experienced no issue garnering new customers. More likely is that FAA flight restrictions have capped Prime Air’s operations—and, by extension, its potential demand in Lockeford and College Station.

“While the FAA broadened Prime Air’s authority to conduct drone deliveries to include sites in California and Texas, the phased process for expanding our service areas is taking longer than we anticipated,” Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit told CNBC.

Whatever the reason for Prime Air’s lack of success, Amazon appears to be committed to getting its drone business off the ground. But it’s going to take much longer than expected.

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