It has been almost a decade since Amazon Prime first used a drone to deliver a package. Specifically, in 2016 the first aerial device was used to convey a package to a customer; in the years since then, the retailing giant has sought to refine and expand that process. That hasn’t been without some issues, however, and a series of recent incidents has led the FAA to open multiple investigations into the drone delivery program.
The first of these involves an incident that took place in the city of Tolleson, Arizona. As Reuters’s David Shepardson reported at the time, the FAA and the NTSB announced an investigation into two Prime delivery drones striking part of a crane. A spokesperson for the company told Reuters that Amazon had also looked into the matter and was “confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them.”
That isn’t the only case of an Amazon drone crashing into something that it should not have. This week, CNBC’s Annie Palmer reported that the FAA was investigating Amazon due to a drone breaking an internet cable in Waco, Texas. Based on a video of the incident that CNBC reviewed, the drone cut the cable shortly after lifting off post-delivery.
In a statement released to CNBC, an Amazon representative noted that the incident had not resulted in a significant loss of internet for the wider community. “We’ve paid for the cable line’s repair for the customer and have apologized for the inconvenience this caused them,” the company’s spokesperson said.
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Drone delivery isn’t just for AmazonStill, it isn’t hard to see why the FAA is looking into this matter, or why a customer might be frustrated if their package delivery also resulted in their internet service going down temporarily. It will be interesting to see what the FAA’s investigation results in, and whether that leads to any changes for Amazon Prime’s drone deliveries. For now, at least, Amazon looks to expanding that program’s reach: earlier this month, the company announced that its drones would now delivery packages to more customers in Michigan.
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