Amazon.com Inc. said Wednesday it made its first customer delivery by drone, putting the online retailer in the lead to use drones as a new delivery method.The first customer, a British man near Cambridge in the U.K., last week ordered a Fire TV and a bag of popcorn, Amazon said. Amazon's drone took 13 minutes to deliver the 4.7 pound package to a two-story farmhouse after flying over the English countryside, Amazon showed in a video.
The delivery marks the start of operations for Amazon's drone program, which aims to get packages to customers in 30 minutes or less, after three years of skepticism and regulatory hurdles.
"First-ever #AmazonPrimeAir customer delivery is in the books," Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said in a tweet announcing the delivery.
Amazon is offering drone deliveries to Amazon Prime customers who live within 5.2 square miles around a small fulfillment center near Cambridge. The video shows a track the drone uses to launch, a platform from which employees monitor takeoff, and a landing pad on the customer's lawn. Amazon debuted its drone program in the U.K. because it obtained regulatory approval more quickly.
Amazon says it will make deliveries seven days a week during daylight hours, if the weather permits. In order to qualify for drone delivery, the items must weigh less than five pounds. Already, 87% of the items sold on Amazon are under five pounds and are small enough to be carried by drone, according to a spokeswoman.
Customers who live in this designated area can place orders on a Prime Air app-the name of its drone-delivery program. For now, Amazon says it is starting its private trial with two customers, but will add dozens of customers in the coming months and collect data about the program.
Amazon's announcement makes it the first major company to make drone deliveries a reality. Alphabet Inc.'s Google formed a delivery-drone team in 2012, but couldn't figure out everything from a stable design to how to deliver a package. The company scrapped that design and started over in 2014, but the new model of drones undergoing tests in Merced, Calif., are still unreliable, according to former employees.
A startup named Flirtey Inc. last month started delivering Domino's pizza via drone in a small test in New Zealand, while United Parcel Service Inc. in September kicked off a commercial drone delivery test to target deliveries like medicine for difficult-to-access or remote areas.
Generally, traditional logistics and delivery companies have expressed skepticism about the likelihood of mass delivery by drone ever gaining traction in the U.S., pointing to security and safety concerns, as well as the problem with thousands of drones crowding the sky to deliver packages.
"It's an interesting logistical concept, but not particularly viable in an urban environment," said Ivan Hofmann, a former FedEx executive and transportation consultant. While it could work in rural areas, "I don't look for one to deliver in downtown Manhattan anytime soon."
Amazon says on its website that while the sight of "Prime Air" drones seems far fetched now, it expects them to one day be as common as a mail truck.
Three years ago, Amazon was the first major retailer to announce it planned to one day make package deliveries via drone. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos said during a "60 Minutes" interview then that it was possible Amazon could introduce drones within four to five years, depending in part on Federal Aviation Administration approvals. "I know this looks like science fiction. It's not," he said at the time.
Since then, the company has hit some hurdles to testing in the U.S. and has lobbied for faster action from regulators. It has had more luck in the U.K., where the online retailing giant made a deal with British authorities in July to begin testing deliveries. Britain's aviation regulator exempted Amazon from certain regulations, such as only flying within the line of sight of a drone operator.
The drone used in last week's delivery flew below 400 feet and was guided by GPS, Amazon said.
However, the limited area and the rural nature of Amazon's Cambridge drone deliveries make it difficult to determine how Amazon might expand the operation, which might require hundreds of new warehouses for drone pickups.
Drones are just one piece of the vision by the online retailer to build out its own transportation network to control more of its deliveries and to one day compete with UPS and FedEx Corp., according to people familiar with the matter. The company has said it is leasing 40 planes, also branded Prime Air, and buying long-haul truck trailers to haul goods by land to build out its shipping network.
Currently, Amazon's fastest shipping option in the U.S. is Prime Now, which costs $7.99 for delivery of items ordered off a more limited site in one hour, typically delivered by a car or van.
One of the reasons Amazon has been looking to take over more of its supply chain is due to its skyrocketing shipping costs, in large part thanks to consumers' appetite for speedy deliveries. In the third quarter, shipping costs rose 43% to $3.9 billion.