It'll be interesting to how many of those little things will be running into each other.

Theres going to be so many lost packages right away. It seems like a good idea, I would definitely wait until they perfect the system

Couldn't someone just wait for it to come and then destroy or steal the drone itself? Like if you knew what you were doing you could order something small, wait for the drone, take it, and then program it right so that you were able to control it. Couldn't you?

xCraZyxProductionZz wrote Couldn't someone just wait for it to come and then destroy or steal the drone itself? Like if you knew what you were doing you could order something small, wait for the drone, take it, and then program it right so that you were able to control it. Couldn't you?

I would love to see some idiot try and catch it with all those spinning blades.
And uumm Since it's navigating by a GPS they would trace it, and a matter of fact they will have your adress, name and all that since they know where it's going and who it's going to.
Lastly no...you can't simple reprogram it to do whatever you want, don't you think they already thought of this? Amazon isn't a stupid company.

thats crazy, but what happens when bad weather hits or if people purposely attack the drones? its a good idea but not at the same time. too many risks

Danimals wrote thats crazy, but what happens when bad weather hits or if people purposely attack the drones? its a good idea but not at the same time. too many risks

People couldn't purposely attack the drones.
Any civilians couldn't shoot down something going that fast, I doubt even a trained gunman could.

Wow, that is a huge step forward for Amazon. I'm looking forward to see this in the future .

I could see alot of problems with this such as people intercepting the parcels or robbing the drones

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.


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.

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.

I do agree it going to cost a lot of money to do this so they can pay off the drones and expenses.