Amazon Drone Delivery Is a Big Step Closer to Really Happening

The video above is an interview Amazon founder Jeff Bezos did with 60 Minutes in 2013 about how the company was planning on eventual package deliveries via drone. "It's early, it's years away," Bezos said.

Fast-forward, and "years away" in 2013 has given way to "probably sometime soon" in 2020. Earlier this week, the FAA granted Amazon broad permission to use drones for delivery, out of sight of their operators. The delivery fleet will be called Prime Air.

“This certification is an important step forward for Prime Air and indicates the FAA’s confidence in Amazon’s operating and safety procedures for an autonomous drone delivery service that will one day deliver packages to our customers around the world,” David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air, said in a statement, via CNBC. “We will continue to develop and refine our technology to fully integrate delivery drones into the airspace, and work closely with the FAA and other regulators around the world to realize our vision of 30 minute delivery.”

Google and UPS have previously also won FAA approval for drone delivery. For their part, Amazon says they're still in the testing phase, so I guess we'll see when they pivot into scaling their usage up.

Nonetheless, given how we've seen Amazon execute on whatever they put their mind to, it seems like a safe bet we're going to be seeing their drones all over the place in a few years' time. Delivery within a half-hour sounds super ambitious, and this whole idea presents a major question about what is going to happen with all the delivery drivers they've been hiring. Now that all this feels inevitable, I guess we'll learn later on whether the drone delivery will be a good or bad thing for society in aggregate.