Amazon.com Releases Video Footage of Prime Air Drone

Amazon is a premiere online shopping destination. Many people, when they are searching for the perfect gift this season, will take a close look at the prices on Amazon and compare them to prices through other online stores. However, the company recently teased its consumers with a new possibility.

Amazon.com Drone

The company released a video of a new drone design that takes off and lands like a helicopter, but flies like a plane, and it will be delivering your Amazon Prime items. The drone is called Amazon Prime Air.

Videos of the drone were released nearly two years after the company made the announcement that it was going to use drones to deliver parcels to its customers. However, the drone that the company showcased in the video released on Sunday is far different from the one the company showed previously.

Amazon Prime Air will be carrying parcels fuselage rather than below the drone as they had previously discussed. The drone will rise about 400 feet then it will become a streamlined airplane. When it is ready to land, it does just that. It drops vertically, delivers the package, and then it rises vertically to return to its location.

While these things are a bit different from the first drone design, many speculate that the previous drone design will also probably continue. There will probably be a whole variety of designs for different environments.

Currently, the drones are only able to fly up to 15 miles. However, the drone is able to sense any obstacles in its way and may come in handy (in its current state) in a town-to-town basis.

When will the drones be up and running?

Now that Amazon has released designs and has proven its drone to be able to fly, there are still a few things that need to happen before the company is able to use tis drone. The United States Federal Aviation Administration is still deciding on whether or not they will allow commercial use of drones.

U.S. Federal Aviation Administration officials have yet to finalize any rules when it comes to commercial drones. However, proposed rules have said that retailers like Amazon.com would eb allowed to use the drones for deliveries if they followed certain limitations like a weight limit of 55 pounds and only daytime flights.

Amazon said that it had expected rules from the U.S. FAA by this year. However, the administration has still not been able to provide guidelines for this unprecedented delivery service.

“We will deploy when and where we have the regulatory support needed to safely realize our vision,” Amazon officials said. “We’re excited about this technology and one day using it to deliver packages to customers around the world in 30 minutes or less.”

Amazon will be providing free shipping for a majority of its items this holiday season. However, your packages won’t be delivered by drone (sorry). It won’t likely be too long before you’ll see a drone stop by your house to drop off your orders though.

Amanda Blankenship

Amanda Blankenship is Chief Editor at District Media, Inc., leading content strategy, quality assurance, and editorial operations across high-traffic personal finance sites like SavingAdvice.com and CleverDude.com. A Wingate University graduate with a BA in Communications (Journalism focus), she brings over a decade of experience in digital publishing, writing, and team leadership in the personal finance space.