Amazon has been given the green light to test flights with drones outside the visual range of a human air traffic controller in the UK. This paves the way for these machines to be used for parcel delivery to private households in the future.
The online retailer is one of six organisations taking part in a trial led by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), whose other projects include inspecting offshore wind farms, air traffic control, policing and delivering emergency medical supplies.
Kirkwall Airport on the Orkney Islands will be used to test how drones and other aircraft can operate safely alongside each other.
The regulator said all programs would use “advanced technologies” for tasks such as navigation and detecting other aircraft in a controlled environment. Its goal is to finalize regulation for wider use of drones.
The tests are intended to collect important safety data, such as how drones detect and avoid other aircraft and what electronic signals they can send to be visible to other airspace users and to communicate with air traffic control.
Sophie O’Sullivan, Director of the Future of Aviation at the CAA, said: “These innovative trials represent a significant step forward in the safe integration of drones into UK airspace.
“By supporting projects ranging from consumer deliveries to critical infrastructure inspections, we are collecting important data to shape future policies and regulations.
“Our aim is to make beyond-visual-line drone operations a safe and everyday reality, helping to modernise UK airspace and integrate new technologies into our skies.”
Amazon announced last year that it would start home deliveries by drone in the UK and Italy before the end of 2024.
In the US, the company already offers drone deliveries in Lockeford, California and College Station, Texas.
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However, it has been almost eight years since the technology company announced the completion of its first commercial drone delivery in Cambridge. The company downsized the UK arm of its drone division, Prime Air, in 2021.
David Carbon, Vice President and Managing Director of Prime Air, said: “It is vital for operators like us to have clear regulatory requirements to be able to bring new technologies like drone delivery to customers in the UK and deploy them at scale.
“We appreciate the CAA’s efforts to work with us to bring clarity to the regulations that support commercial drone deliveries.”
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