Amazon receives the green light to deliver by drone

Amazon will be able to continue its experiments with drone delivery. The e-commerce giant obtained, on Monday August 31, 2020, a license from the American Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to deploy a fleet of autonomous delivery drones in the United States. However, the firm has not set a date for the commercial deployment of this delivery method.

In any case, this approval will allow the Seattle firm to speed up delivery in 30 minutes, one of its stated priorities. The newly acquired license will make it possible to test delivery for customers with its fully electric drones, via a "Prime Air" service. The online retailer began testing in 2013, already with the idea of ​​one day achieving 30-minute delivery. He had applied for a license from the regulator in the summer of 2019. The drone is able to deliver up to 2.3 kg of online orders over 24 km.

A buoyant market

Amazon's Prime Air service reportedly uses drones capable of carrying up to two pounds to deliver packages to customers in less than 30 minutes, according to federal filings last year. The world's largest e-commerce company sees this as beneficial for the FAA as well, saying the agency could use the innovation to collect data on the future of drone cargo delivery.

In any case, Amazon will rely on a recipe that has contributed to the success of its "Amazon Prime" subscription formula. Namely the speed and efficiency of delivery, which are among its main selling points. In 2019, the company had implemented 24-hour delivery for Prime subscribers. However, it is not alone in this future market segment: UPS also obtained, last October, the approval of the FAA to operate a fleet of medical parcel delivery drones on campuses in the country.

The firm of Jeff Bezos intends, finally, to bet on a heavy market trend for the home delivery of food products. However, it will have to face a strong competitive universe. Other providers are now betting on autonomous drones for the last mile Wing, a subsidiary of Alphabet (Google), in October became the first company to deliver drones in the United States, starting with a rural area in Virginia, on the East coast.