Sometimes the skyline is a moving target and Amazon says it’s going to change procedures to take that into account in drone delivery operations. Two 80-pound Amazon MK30 package delivery drones smacked into the horizontal boom of a construction crane in Tolleson, Arizona, on Wednesday. The heavily damaged aircraft fell to the ground at the foot of the crane. While the usual authorities do their investigations, Amazon says it knows what happened and what they’re going to do about it. That would seem to be looking out the window before sending out the drones.
“We’ve completed our own internal review of this incident and are confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them,” Terrence Clark, an Amazon spokesperson, told CNN. “Nonetheless, we’ve introduced additional processes like enhanced visual landscape inspections to better monitor for moving obstructions such as cranes.” Drone deliveries were shut down for two days after the accidents but are expected to resume on Friday. The service allows Amazon customers in the immediate area of the Tolleson delivery center to get small packages weighing less than five pounds within an hour of ordering them.
That’ll teach those pesky cranes for operating without ADS-B ! How dare them invade the airspace and delay delivery of my stuff.
Ya KNEW this was going to happen. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Wait til someone is hurt or killed by one of these things. Operating BVLOS without FPV is gonna prove to be problematic, I predict. These things are gonna become so prolific that the law of averages is going to catch up with ’em.
I just thought of it … I better lower my ham radio tower when not in use, too … I don’t think it’s in an aviation database?
Drone delivery is driven by [the perceived] need for delivery in minutes after you order and the desire to find a use for a new technology. I, for one, can plan my purchases and deliveries far enough out in advance that I never even use next day delivery.
I told the FO to plot those crane Notams!!!!!!!!!! (Airline joke).
Crane needs ADSB-Out or EC? Yo, uAvionix, wake up!
Came here for this….
Just when I thought we might be able to rid the NOTAM system of all of those useless “crane” and “unit tower” entries, this happens…
OK, I would have thought “…the technology that supports them,” would include avoiding collisions, but thanks for clearing that up, Amazon.
Since FAA looks like it’s rolling over on BVLOS, may be lawyers/insurance industry that set the rules. “High net worth” evtol, helo or bizjet pax fatalities will have the ambulance chasers salivating to go after Amazon’s or other industry deep pockets, especially without a dead pilot to shield the corporate liability.
…(more) bad news is that Amazon can afford to self-insure without batting an eye…and GA rates would probably go up to cover those that don’t self-insure as well as to shift liability to pesky manned aviation for hitting their UAS/cargo.
Bingo! Deep pockets can get any FAA policy or reg changed. Efforts of the little guy get largely ignored.
This is a part of a bigger push to exclusively fully autonomous aviation. It’s really the only way to have any autonomous operation. Maybe a big expensive AD will put the nail in the coffin of manned GA so that the FAA can be quietly shut down.
“Go sit in front of your MS Flight Simulator old man and pretend you’re flying a Champ on floats off a lake in Minnesota. We want to fly in a UAV air taxi”
BVOLS without reliable “sense and avoid” is an accident waiting to happen. Wait — it’s now happened — TWICE! And a “survey” of the area is worthless with moving targets. So how do we get Congress to understand that? It is, after all, Congress which is forcing the FAA to move faster on BVOLS than the safety technology becomes available.
Hmm … 2 drones hit slow moving crane… but Amazon has found the problem and has concluded it’s found a solution to mitigate crane to drone integration risks. I guess, that is the start of the next risk mitigation for integration of drones with sailboat masts, wind turbines ( large blades moving slowly), Part 103 ultralights, skydiving activities, hospital heliports, and those pesky airplanes/airliners operating from airports that so many Amazon customers chose to live near while Amazon chose to promise one hour delivery in these urban, suburban, and rural areas. This combo of Amazon and the FAA working together should resolve these present and future conflicts within the next couple of decades. Look how fast NexGen worked out.
Lemmesee… A construction crane has ‘way more size&mass than my helicopter. I don’t have any problem seeing-and-avoiding even the tallest cranes, TV towers, high-tension power lines, solo student pilots, and all the other non-sentient obstructions in the airspace I inhabit. (The sentient ones have honed their S&A technology over millennia.) Amazon drones are neither sentient nor visible until too late.
Amazon is the world’s largest civilian user of drones. What do you want to bet the FAA will mandate that tall buildings, TV towers, and anything else that pierces the 100’agl floor of soi-disant “Amazon airspace” be equipped with ADS-B/out? (Or worse yet, something completely new and incompatible.) After all, Amazon is a critical component of the American economy.
But their drones are the insentient invaders of this airspace. The onus is on THEM to see&avoid US. Anything short of that will result in loss of life. It’s just a matter of time.
Watched a SiFi movie years ago and the solution to this problem was MORE Cameras. The drone company had cameras on top of all the highest places continually 3D mapping ALL movement. Even the smallest birds where being tracked and mapped every 1/10th of a second uploading to a computer server transmitter. Then every drone and self-driving vehicle could see and avoid everything. The conspiracy movie was twenty-five years ago or more and seemed a little far fetched. What a great excuse for more tracking of the city people then to say it’s for your safety so you can get a ‘Hot’ pizza delivery.
Attorneys will sooner or later fix this issue.
The FAA can bend over all it wants, Amazon will be sued out of its knickers.
… and this will happen BEFORE the “Normalizing Unmanned Aircraft Systems Beyond Visual Line of Sight Operations” NPRM become a rule? Attorneys are some of my best friends and family. But they freely admit that they rarely “fix” anything. More like field triage surgeons, they cobble up compensations that rarely restore the status quo ante, settling for uti possidetis.
Fully understood, dear Aviatrexx, however we appear to live in an era that lacks any and all common sense, justice or regard for anything. In order for changes to happen, money has to change owners. Lots and lots and lots of money.
What we see now is the very tiny tip of an iceberg and I bet we will have the first deadly incident with a BVLOS operated Amazon drone before 2026 comes to an end. The larger the number of bodybags, the larger the financial damage.
In the olden days, fundamentals of instruction said that learning takes place when there is a change of behavior based on experience. Realistically behaviors in the corporate world no longer change unless the experience involves financial damage.
Amazon has deep pockets. Nobody will blame the FAA or sue them for negligence resulting from regulatory inaction – but Amazon really loves money. Go after it and behavior changes. Temporarily at least.
Perhaps Amazon should develop a really large drone capable of lifting a loaded Amazon delivery truck (and driver) with flashing headlights and taillights to bring the ground delivery system to a neighbourhood near you…
And give the driver a joystick in the cab, in case of, you know…
Wait til these folks launch in fall prop blade icing conditions…
Who would have thought, two Amazon MK30s into the same crane, minutes apart. These drones weigh 80 pounds, fly 35 to 40 mph, and only see 100 to 200 feet ahead, giving 2 to 4 seconds to avoid a collision. Amazon is projecting 1.37 million flights a day. Even at 1 in a million odds, that still means one crash every day. BVLOS is supposed to be the safeguard, but part of it missed. The system did not anticipate the incursion. Hmm.
A Waymo taxi is required to do much better than that, at street speeds, in less challenging 2D.