The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) approval this week of Amazon Prime Air’s request to be considered an “air carrier” is a game changer, according to cyber expert and Executive Director for the Cybersecurity Collaborative Parham Eftekhari. “Amazon is among the many delivery services that are planning on using drones to expand delivery services both to residential consumers and to business users.”
North Carolina’ Flytrex has been developing the technology delivering goods in Reykjavik, Iceland for the past year, and UPS and Alphabet, parent company of Google, secured FAA permission to develop their own testing programs last year.
But it’s Amazon’s world we live in today, and they’re about to shake it up as only Amazon can do.
The company’s stated goal is to be able to have a package delivered within 30 minutes of an order being placed. Near instant gratification.
It takes a company the size of Amazon to develop such ground-breaking applications of drone delivery given the upfront expenditures to literally get it off the ground, but Eftekhari says there are many businesses already using drones. “Drones are being used at construction sites. You have insurance companies that are using drones to do property assessments so you don’t have to have an agent go out. Drones are being used to provide internet service to rural communities,” he says.
Amazon is now moving to their next phase of testing, though not saying where or when they anticipate the service becoming standard.
photo: getty images