Rainbow_Dash wrote This is illegal right now. Commercial drone flights are not currently allowed by the FAA; FedEx and UPS are probably the biggest proponents of legalization right now, though. I'm interested in seeing where this goes, even with the obvious flaws it has in its current state.

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Xbox_One wrote

Cygnet wrote Honestly this would be awesome, but like everyone else is saying this is going to take years to even get close to marketing and using on a daily basis.

I dont know how good of an idea this would be, because I feel like it would be almost unfair that some people would get to use this feature (because they live 30 min away from the shipping depot) and others dont.

Another thing would be the weather. What happens when its really stormy, and someone orders a pretty hefty, but small enough package to fit in small container? Im sure the octocopter will start to fly crazy and crash. Now they would have to dispatch humans to retrieve the package. Waste of time.

Good idea, but I dont know if we will ever see it to be completely honest.

They are serious about this idea, They said, it should be fully functional in about 4-5 years. Also if you havent realized yet... Life isn't always fair. There span would probably be more than 30 minutes away from the warehouse. Im sure they will have restriction based on the weather just like real flights do. If the weather is to bad it wont fly and so one.

I think this is an AMAZING idea because it can create A LOT more jobs for the company and for people to have. It will probably be very costly to do it but I think it is worth it.

Lavish wrote This is going to take years to prefect and work out all the kinks.
I have a feeling this is going to cost quite a bit due to just how many people order daily from Amazon.

They would need millions of drones to keep up with orders.
Not to mention having to deal with air traffic and keeping out of the way of actual airplanes.

They would not need anywhere close to 1 million drones. This "Amazon Prime Air" would most likely cost more than 1 day shipping for UPS or USPS (Which is around 50$ depending on size). Also, Air traffic would be no conflict with these drones because they would not go near the altitude that airplanes travel in. These drones would probably only reach 500 feet and all general aviation aircraft fly at 1000+ feet.

The lowest that airplanes are allowed to fly in any situation is 500 feet above ground level, so if they can manage to stay below that and away from airports, they should be pretty well set.

To get technical... the lowest in a city area is 1000 feet and in an unpopulated area it is 500. As a pilot in training, the rule is: To stay above 1000 feet no matter where because of towers in the city/country area that are 500-700 feet tall and some of them even taller.

"Let me get my bricks ready and throw it at each of those drones, steal the packages, sell the drone parts and sell the package." -MusicAddiction
-From youtube

This would be amazing if it will work as well as they make it seem.

I can see this only being available in larger cities initially though.

It just seems so unrealistic for them to be able to offer it for every city especially ones with under 50,000 people

I think if they did this people would be trying to shoot them down and stealing them. But idk kind of stupid

Hm thats crazy wonder how much it costs!

Xbox_One wrote

Rainbow_Dash wrote This is illegal right now. Commercial drone flights are not currently allowed by the FAA; FedEx and UPS are probably the biggest proponents of legalization right now, though. I'm interested in seeing where this goes, even with the obvious flaws it has in its current state.

Click to View Content

Xbox_One wrote

Cygnet wrote Honestly this would be awesome, but like everyone else is saying this is going to take years to even get close to marketing and using on a daily basis.

I dont know how good of an idea this would be, because I feel like it would be almost unfair that some people would get to use this feature (because they live 30 min away from the shipping depot) and others dont.

Another thing would be the weather. What happens when its really stormy, and someone orders a pretty hefty, but small enough package to fit in small container? Im sure the octocopter will start to fly crazy and crash. Now they would have to dispatch humans to retrieve the package. Waste of time.

Good idea, but I dont know if we will ever see it to be completely honest.

They are serious about this idea, They said, it should be fully functional in about 4-5 years. Also if you havent realized yet... Life isn't always fair. There span would probably be more than 30 minutes away from the warehouse. Im sure they will have restriction based on the weather just like real flights do. If the weather is to bad it wont fly and so one.

I think this is an AMAZING idea because it can create A LOT more jobs for the company and for people to have. It will probably be very costly to do it but I think it is worth it.

Lavish wrote This is going to take years to prefect and work out all the kinks.
I have a feeling this is going to cost quite a bit due to just how many people order daily from Amazon.

They would need millions of drones to keep up with orders.
Not to mention having to deal with air traffic and keeping out of the way of actual airplanes.

They would not need anywhere close to 1 million drones. This "Amazon Prime Air" would most likely cost more than 1 day shipping for UPS or USPS (Which is around 50$ depending on size). Also, Air traffic would be no conflict with these drones because they would not go near the altitude that airplanes travel in. These drones would probably only reach 500 feet and all general aviation aircraft fly at 1000+ feet.

The lowest that airplanes are allowed to fly in any situation is 500 feet above ground level, so if they can manage to stay below that and away from airports, they should be pretty well set.

To get technical... the lowest in a city area is 1000 feet and in an unpopulated area it is 500. As a pilot in training, the rule is: To stay above 1000 feet no matter where because of towers in the city/country area that are 500-700 feet tall and some of them even taller.

Well if we're going to get technical, it's 1,000 feet above the tallest obstacle within a 2,000 foot radius, unless over sparsely populated areas, in which a minimum altitude of 500 AGL is enforced. As a commercial pilot with nearly 1,000 hours, I know the rules too, and FAR/AIM section 91.119 says that you can fly at "An altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface."

They arent even legal yet but in 4-5 years hopefully FFA lets them fly

If Jeff Bezos thinks he is going to be sending a drone to my house and I am going to be sending it back, he is oh so wrong.

There are a list of problems with this such as

The packages could get stolen
The iteam could be dropped and destroyed
The quadroter could be stolen
The blades could slice people
It could malfunction
Skynet could turn these into weapons.