US Proposes to Expand Delivery Drone Flights

The Trump administration has proposed a rule to significantly expand drone operations, which could alter America’s shopping habits, boosting retailers like Walmart and Amazon as they expand into delivering consumer packages by autonomous aircraft.

The proposal, unveiled on Tuesday (Aug. 5), aims to safely integrate drones — technically called unmanned aircraft systems — into the national airspace. Under current rules, operators must seek individual waivers for flights beyond the drone operator’s direct line of visual sight.

The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Bryan Bedford said comments accompanying the rule announcement that the “Beyond Visual Line of Sight” proposal is “key to realizing drones’ societal and economic benefits.” He cited package delivery first, followed by agriculture, aerial surveying, public safety, recreation and flight testing.

An FAA fact sheet said that under the proposal, drone operations would occur at or below 400 feet above ground level, from pre-designated and access-controlled locations. Operators would need FAA approval for the areas where they intend to fly, and proposals for a single operator to fly multiple drones would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

Late last year, Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery service got a boost with new drones that have double the range and half the noise of previous models.

Approved by the FAA the month before, the drones began operations in select areas of Arizona and Texas, delivering small packages weighing up to five pounds. The retail behemoth paused the aircraft for two months for a software upgrade but resumed flights in April. Amazon aims to deliver 500 million packages by drones by the end of the decade, with groceries and other retail goods on a customer’s doorstep within an hour of ordering.

In June, Walmart expanded its ultra-fast drone delivery across five states to Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas.

Accounting firm PWC sees drones making 808 million deliveries to global consumers by 2034, at an average cost of around $2 per package.