Amazon to launch drone deliveries in the UK next year

Amazon is to launch drone deliveries in the UK next year, more than a decade after Jeff Bezos first promised packages by air.

The online retail giant said customers in the UK would from next year have the option to get packages weighing under five pounds delivered by its “Prime Air” service within an hour.

Amazon declined to confirm where the programme would launch, although said it would start with a single site and expand. It said customers would be able to choose from “thousands of items” weighing five pounds or less.

Baroness Vere, the aviation minister, said the pilot would “build our understanding how to best use the new technology safely and securely”.

Amazon already offers limited drone package deliveries in two cities in California and Texas. It said the project would expand to another US city, as well as to Italy, by the end of 2024.

Mr Bezos first announced Amazon was working on delivery drones in 2013 and began piloting the technology in the UK from a lab in Cambridge in 2016. The project never expanded beyond a handful of test users.

Amazon cut a large part of its UK team working on drones in 2021, while mass redundancies at the company earlier this year also hit its Prime Air team.

The project has faced delays and regulatory hurdles, while a number of its drones have crashed during field testing.

However, Amazon began its first drone package deliveries in the US last December under approval from the US Federal Aviation Authority.

Its initial US trials have been heavily limited by restrictions, such as stopping drones flying over roads without supervision.

In the UK, Amazon was beaten to a first commercial launch by Royal Mail and the company Skyports, which collaborated to launch a drone delivery service in the Orkney Islands over the summer.

Currently, drone projects in the UK cannot fly outside of line of sight of their operators except under strict test conditions, severely limiting the opportunity for autonomous deliveries.

On Tuesday, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced a series of pilot projects to allow flights beyond line of sight. The trials could ultimately lead to drones flying alongside commercial air traffic.

Amazon on Wednesday also revealed a new drone design, the MK30, which it said was smaller, quieter and lighter than its previous models.

David Carbon, vice president of Amazon’s Prime Air, said: “We are excited to announce the expansion of Prime Air delivery internationally, for the first time outside the US.”

Amazon is not the only company targeting drone deliveries in the UK. The Telegraph revealed in September that Manna, an Irish start-up, planned to launch drone deliveries in the UK next year and had made a licence application to the CAA.

Google’s drone division – Wing – is currently operating in Ireland and intends to expand to the UK.