The Federal Aviation Administration announced on March 19 that it has issued an experimental airworthiness certificate for an Amazon Logistics unmanned aircraft system (UAS) design, an authorization that permits the online retailer to test the drone for research and development and crew training purposes. Amazon, which has ambitions to perform package deliveries by drone, has pressed the agency to allow it to operate.
An experimental “ticket,” which the FAA typically grants for an aircraft that does not have a type design approval, allows Amazon’s fledgling Prime Air delivery business to test and demonstrate the drone but not to fly it for commercial purposes. The Seattle-based company also applied to the agency last July to fly a small battery-powered rotorcraft under a provision of the 2012 FAA reauthorization act known as Section 333.
Under the provisions of the experimental ticket, Amazon must conduct all flight operations at 400 feet or below, during daylight hours and in visual meteorological conditions, the FAA said. The drone must remain within the visual line of sight of the pilot and an observer, and the pilot must have at least a private pilot’s license and current medical certification.
The certificate also requires Amazon to provide monthly data to the FAA, including “the number of flights conducted, pilot duty time per flight, unusual hardware or software malfunctions, any deviations from air traffic controllers’ instructions, and any unintended loss of communication links.”
In a February 5 submission to the Department of Transportation in support of its application, Stephanie Burns, Amazon Prime Air associate general counsel, said Amazon plans to test the drone on company-owned property in a rural area of Washington state, employing “geofencing” and other measures to keep the vehicle confined within the operating area.
When the FAA requested additional information from Amazon following its earlier Section 333 application, the company’s vice president for global policy, Paul Misener, wrote back that Amazon might move its drone testing offshore because of the continued delay. In testimony before the House aviation subcommittee in December, Peggy Gilligan, the FAA’s associate administrator for aviation safety, while not actually naming Amazon said the agency was trying to steer the company toward obtaining a special airworthiness certificate in addition to the Section 333 exemption. “We know that they are not satisfied that they have to go that path,” she added.
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International in a statement said: “Companies like Amazon are at the forefront of technological advances and are investing heavily in research and development. It is important to ensure that innovative uses of UAS technology, such as package delivery, take off in the U.S. Industry and government also need to work together to lay the groundwork for beyond-line-of-sight operations, a necessary prerequisite for package delivery and other transformational uses of UAS technology.”
Amazon obtained the FAA experimental ticket just as another Internet-related company—search engine and services provider Google—revealed that it has scrapped a flying wing design it quietly tested over an Australian farm to deliver small goods. Speaking on March 17 at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, Astro Teller, head of the company’s Google X research laboratory, said the company is pursuing a different design because the flying wing proved difficult to control, The Wall Street Journal reported.