Amazon announced Friday that it will soon begin drone deliveries in College Station, Texas.
Amazon
Amazon said Friday it will begin delivering packages to shoppers by drone in College Station, Texas, later this year.
The east Texas city is the second location to see Prime Air’s drone delivery launch. Last month, Amazon announced it would be delivering some packages by drone later this year to the Northern California town of Lockeford.
Amazon said it will work with Texas A&M University, located in College Station, to deploy the drones. Amazon shoppers in Lockeford and College Station will be able to get free drone delivery on thousands of everyday items, Amazon said.
The company said its drones are capable of delivering packages weighing up to five pounds in less than an hour. Prime Air drones can fly up to 50 miles per hour and up to a height of 400 feet, Amazon said.
Its drones fly to a designated delivery location, land in shoppers’ backyards and hover at a safe altitude, the company said. The device drops the package, rises back to altitude and returns to base, Amazon said.
Amazon’s drone delivery program has been moving slowly since 2013 when founder and then-CEO Jeff Bezos said the company was testing the technology and promised that half-hour Prime Air drone deliveries would arrive in 2018.
In the years since, Amazon has made some progress in the effort, debuting an updated version of its Prime Air delivery drone in 2019 at its re:MARS conference in Las Vegas. At the time, Jeff Wilke, who was Amazon’s chief consumer officer, stated that drones would be used “within months” to deliver packages.
Amazon reached a milestone in August 2020 when the Federal Aviation Administration gave it approval to operate its fleet of Prime Air delivery drones.
But the drone delivery program has also reportedly experienced some setbacks, such as high turnover and multiple crashes, including one that sparked a 20-acre wildfire in eastern Oregon, according to Business Insider.
Amazon spokesman Av Zammit said the Business Insider report refers to events that occurred during routine test operations in a controlled, unpopulated area using a retired drone model. Amazon expects these types of events to occur in test scenarios, and no one was injured as a result of those flights, he added. Every test is done in accordance with the regulations in force, Zammit said.
“Package delivery operations in College Station will not be experimental operations,” Zammit said in a statement. “Instead, they will be conducted under an FAA-issued air carrier certificate that enables commercial deliveries and demonstrates that our comprehensive processes meet the FAA’s high safety bar.”
Amazon said it does not share information about turnover. Prime Air continues to hire and retain talent, the company added.
WATCH: Amazon gets FAA approval to operate a fleet of delivery drones
