FAA Approves Amazon Prime Air Drones To Fly Beyond Visual Line Of Sight

(RTTNews) - Amazon announced that Prime Air, its drone delivery service, has received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration or FAA to fly its drones farther, beyond the visual line of sight. The approval would allow Prime Air to further expand drone deliveries and to safely scale operations to more locations in the U.S.

The company said the new authorization and new permissions allow it to expand delivery area in College Station, Texas with deliveries by its current MK-27 drone. Later this year, drone deliveries will begin integrating into Amazon's delivery network. With this, drones will deploy from facilities next to Same-Day Delivery sites, which will provide Amazon customers with faster delivery.

Beyond Visual Line of Sight, known as BVLOS, is a term used in aviation to describe flying a drone where the remote pilot can't see it directly with their own eyes. The remore pilot, instead, would rely on instruments or technology to monitor and control the drone at all times.

According to the FAA, all commercial drone operators are required to be able to maintain a line of sight to their drones until it approves a technology that can safely enable drones to fly beyond visual line of sight.

Amazon noted that regulators worldwide have been working on creating new rules and authorizing technologies for commercial drones. These would allow more complex drone operations, like package delivery, to safely scale and operate beyond the line of sight of a remote pilot.

To obtain FAA permission, Amazon developed a BVLOS strategy, including an onboard detect-and-avoid technology, after years of developing, testing, and refining the system to ensure its drones can detect and avoid obstacles in the air.

The company then submitted crucial engineering information to the FAA, including its onboard detect-and-avoid capabilities. Following this, flight demonstrations were conducted in the presence of FAA inspectors to show that the Amazon system works in real-world scenarios. The company flew drones in the presence of real planes, helicopters, and a hot air balloon to demonstrate how the drone safely navigated away from each of them.

Extensive analysis and test data for the technology were also provided that further validated the safety of the system. The FAA then provided Amazon Prime Air with BVLOS approval after reviewing this information and observing the technology in action at the test site.

Amazon said, "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's Prime Air aims to create a safe and scalable way to deliver packages to customers in 30 minutes or less using highly autonomous drones. The latest permission is expected to support its goal of delivering 500 million packages, per year, by drone, by the end of this decade.

The company in 2020 had received Air Carrier Certificate from the FAA allowing it to operate as an airline and deliver small packages through drone.