Are delivery drones finally ready for take-off?

More than a decade in the making, Amazon is again set to run a trial of its delivery drone in the UK. But there are better uses for delivery drones, explains Nicole Kobie

Click. A customer places their order and, at a warehouse miles away, a Fire stick and bag of popcorn is boxed up and placed inside a drone. Quietly lifting off into the sky, the drone zips its way over the Cambridgeshire landscape, delivering the parcel on the customer’s lawn exactly 13 minutes later. This was the future of Amazon deliveries – back in 2016. Little progress has been made on commercial drone deliveries in the UK in the intervening years, but Amazon is now set for another go on (above?) British soil? And it’s at least partially thanks to the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), which is enabling delivery drones to fly beyond the line of sight, escaping the watchful eye of grounded pilots for the first time. To be clear,…

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