Bloomberg reports on the roadblocks to Amazon’s delivery drone program getting off the ground, including significant personnel turnover and potential security issues.
According to Bloomberg, five crashes occurred at the company’s test site in Pendleton, Oregon, over a four-month period. After a drone’s propeller failed in May, Bloomberg reports that Amazon cleaned away the wreckage before the Federal Aviation Administration could investigate.
A drone’s motor blew apart the next month when it shifted from an upward flight path to flying straight ahead. Both of the safety systems — one that was designed to land the drone in this situation and the other that was supposed to steady it – failed.
As a result, the drone flipped over and plummeted 160 feet into the air, causing a 25-acre wildfire to erupt. Local firefighters were eventually able to put out the fire.
In a report acquired by Bloomberg, the FAA stated, “Instead of a controlled descent to a safe landing, [the drone] dropped about 160 feet in an uncontrolled vertical fall and was devoured by fire.”
Former Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos first announced 30-minute drone deliveries in 2013, and we still don’t have drones delivering Amazon products to our doorsteps over ten years later.
In 2019, the firm teased a makeover of its Prime Air delivery drone with the capacity to fly vertically, as well as a pledge to start drone deliveries later that year — a promise that hasn’t materialized.
It hasn’t been held yet. Amazon received FAA certification to operate as a drone airline in 2020 a year later, which Amazon’s VP of Prime Air described as “a step ahead.” for Prime Air.
In a statement to the edgeAmazon spokesman Av Zammit said the National Transportation Safety Board never classified any of Amazon’s flight tests as an accident because they did not result in any injuries or endanger structures.
“Safety is our top priority,” Zammit said. “We use a closed, private facility to test our systems to their limits and beyond. With rigorous testing like this, we expect these types of events to occur, and we apply the learnings from each flight to improve safety. No one has ever been harmed or injured as a result of these flights, and each test is conducted in accordance with all applicable regulations.”
According to Bloomberg, Amazon occasionally conducted tests “without a full flight crew” and with “inadequate equipment,” according to David Johnson, a former drone flight assistant for Amazon.
Johnson also said that Amazon frequently allocates numerous tasks to one person, an allegation backed up by two other former Amazon employees, according to Bloomberg.
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