Amazon’s package delivery drones are expanding their horizons following a nod of approval from the FAA, the company announced on Thursday.
“We’re excited to share that the FAA has given Prime Air additional permissions that allow us to operate our drones beyond visual line of sight, enabling us to now serve more customers via drone and effectively expand and scale our drone delivery operations,” Amazon said in a press release.
The FAA requires companies to get approval to operate drones beyond a pilot’s visual line of sight, something Amazon said it accomplished after developing “detect-and-avoid technology.”
“We’ve spent years developing, testing, and refining our onboard detect-and-avoid system to ensure our drones can detect and avoid obstacles in the air,” the company said, including “real planes, helicopters, and a hot air balloon.”
Now, Amazon plans to scale the use of its MK-27 drone to “reach customers in more densely populated areas,” the company said.
The FAA’s permission comes after delays in the company’s drone ambitions over the last few years due to field and test crashes, one of which involved a drone that fell 180 feet and “just blew apart when it hit the ground,” Business Insider previously reported.
“It’s also important to note that during our commercial operations we haven’t had any safety mishaps delivering to customers,” an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider over email.
The company began executing drone deliveries in 2022 in its distribution areas in College Station, Texas, and Lockeford, California — the latter of which the company closed in April to focus on other locations across the nation, CNBC reported.
Earlier this year, an Amazon executive boasted that one of its drones in College Station managed to deliver a box of cookies less than 16 minutes after it was ordered.
