When Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos announced plans for delivery drones in 2013, many people were excited at the prospect of receiving their packages via airmail. But since then, there has been little news about the project.

Development and testing are ongoing, but it's still unclear if and when these drones will ever be ready for widespread use. Here, we'll discuss what happened to Amazon's plans for drone delivery.

What Happened to Amazon's Prime Air Drones?

It has been years since Amazon first announced its plans to deliver packages via drones, and many people are still waiting for their orders to arrive by air. So what's the holdup?

It turns out that developing and testing delivery drones is a lot more complicated than it might seem. Amazon has been working on drone deliveries years, but there are still many challenges to overcome.

A report from Bloomberg dived into some issues Amazon is facing with its drone delivery project. The article cited proliferated crashes, safety concerns, employee turnover, and low morale as some main problems.

What We Know About Amazon's Drone Delivery

Image Credit: Amazon

In December 2016, Amazon announced that its drones had completed their first successful delivery in the UK. The package, delivered to a customer in Cambridge, contained an Amazon Fire TV Stick and a bag of popcorn.

While this was a major milestone for the company, the progress of Amazon's drone delivery project has been slow since then. According to the report from Bloomberg, there were five crashes within a four-month period at its testing site in Pendleton, Oregon.

During one of the tests in May, the drone crash-landed after it lost a propeller. The failure of multiple safety features caused a second crash a month later.

According to the FAA report obtained by Bloomberg, the drone dropped like a rock from 160 feet above the ground. The crash caused a fire that consumed the drone and 25 acres of land before the local fire department extinguished it.

Despite the challenges, Amazon is still working on getting its drones ready for delivery. In June 2022, Amazon announced that it will resume Air Prime test deliveries in Lockeford, California, later in the year. Drone deliveries will only be available to the Lockeford community, and anyone that wants to experience an Amazon Prime air delivery requires an Amazon Prime account.

Can We Expect Amazon Prime Air Drones Anytime Soon?

photo of amazon package

At this point, it's still unclear when Amazon will be able to launch its drone delivery service on a large scale. A lot depends on how the tests in California go later this year.

It's also worth noting that Amazon is not the only company working on drone delivery. Google, Walmart, and UPS are also working on their own drone delivery projects with the hope of beating Amazon to the punch.

Google's Project Wing, for instance, is making progress with its own autonomous drones and seems to be ahead of Amazon, having completed over 200,000 commercial deliveries.

Walmart is also working on drone delivery and has been granted a patent for a system that would use drones to deliver packages to customers' homes autonomously.

It's also worth noting that Amazon is not the only company facing challenges with drone delivery. In 2019, UPS announced that it would begin using drones for commercial delivery, having gained approval from the FAA to operate in rural and suburban areas. However, as per another Bloomberg report, the company's chief, Carol Tome, said wind and rain sometimes make it impossible to fly the drones.

The Future of Drone Delivery Is Still Up in the Air

Despite years of development, there are still many challenges to overcome before we see the widespread use of autonomous drones for package delivery. But with major companies like Amazon, Google, UPS, and Walmart all working on the technology, it's only a matter of time until we see progress.