Amazon Allegedly Waves Drone Crash Investigators Aside

Amazon had received Part 135 Air Carrier Certification in August 2020. In Jun 2021, an Amazon ‘Prime Air’ drone crashed in eastern Oregon, sparking 25+ acre fire.

Another test flight weeks later resulted in a crash when the drone’s motors failed in flight, causing it to hurtle 150+ feet to the ground. The MK27 drones they seem to favor weighs almost 90lbs, and have the potential to cause significant injury or possibly death to the unwitting. Over the course of four months, they were crashing a drone a month, at one point cleaning up the site before the “investigator” arrived, and in another instance, allegedly stated to investigators that they were looking into the crashes themselves, and didn’t really see the need for federal eyes? But, the NTSB is only authorized to investigate accidents involving drones that weigh more than 300lbs. though they may initiate investigations…

For some time now, Amazon has been trying to push through the front lines to reach your doorstep and drop off packages by drones. As far as the realists are concerned, the drone delivery project (DDP) is still in the research and development stage, as they’ve been beset with technical challenges, safety issues, and an apparent inability to live up to their self-proclaimed hype. Walmart and Google somehow managed to leapfrog ahead of Amazon to actually delivering merchandise!

It’s alleged that the DDP has burned through over $2 billion, which may be a lot to some, but apparently not them, and the author is unsure of whether this sum goes all the way back to 2013 when Amazon made promises its checkbook is unable to deliver. At the time, Jeff Bezos stated it would likely “take four to five years” to make this “R & D project” a reality, he recently backtracked adding that “Prime Air is committed to making our goal of delivering packages by drones a reality…we are pioneering new ground…it will take time to create the right technology and infrastructure to safely deliver packages to customers.”

FMI: https://amazon.com, https://ntsb.gov