Last year, couple of companies including Dominos, Amazon declared they were all set to deliver orders to home using drones (UAVs). They fanfared the promotional videos delivering orders to home until FAA woke up and asked “who gave you the right to fly drones for commercial purposes”?
FAA, since 2007, declared that the commercial operation of drones is illegal. If an individual offers free shipping in association with a purchase or other offer, FAA would construe the shipping to be in furtherance of a business purpose, and thus, the operation would not fall within the statutory requirement of recreation or hobby purpose.
So basically if you’re flying a drone as a hobbyist, its perfectly fine, crash and burn and you shall be responsible. But you just can’t use drones for commercial purposes. So its pretty clear that there’s no way Amazon, dominos or any other retailer is going to be able to use drones in near future. U.S. airspace won’t allow that to happen until those rules are re-written. That’s supposed to be in 2015, but many experts agree that the FAA won’t actually get its act together before 2020 or so. So Amazon thought, why not enter the emerging markets and get hold before the competition does.
Amazon Prime Air and Drones
The drone delivery will be part of Amazon’s Prime Air package. The drone used is essentially an Octacopter (eight rotors, fans). These octacopters would weigh 2.5kg to 5Kg (not 25kg as reported by other news agencies) and can fly at speeds exceeding 80km/h. These drones would be able to carry a max payload of 2.26 kg, which covers 86% of products sold on Amazon.
Amazon India would be launchpad for the Drone program. India is a hot market for online-retailers and Amazon is trying hard to beat India’s amazon i.e. Flipkart. The drone delivery service will debuts in Mumbai and Bangalore, cities where it has warehouses, said the anonymous sources. Sources also claim “It could be as early as Diwali”, however, Amazon has denied any comments on the statement.
This priority delivery system will be applicable on all Top-selling products including smartphones, gadgets and books and will deliver in 90 minutes to 3 hours time span to the Amazon Prime Air members. Amazon claims that these drones have enough redundancy to keep them going in case of any failures in few rotors.
60 minutes on CBS with Amazon’s CEO discussing drones
Flipkart, the indigenous online retail service, is already doing quiet well in the country. It is currently valued at $5 billion and expected to double by 2016. Company has nearly 7000 employees, of which several had become millionaires overnight, thanks to the recent boon in online-retail. The seattle based company plans to launch the service before the festive season which starts with diwali in October end.
Indian Aviation rules don’t prohibit drones, yet
India uses various drones for various military applications, security including guarding it’s borders, and keeping eye on poachers. Yet, the largest democracy doesn’t have any set of rules in place for restricting drones from be flown for hobby or commercial purposes. When reuters approached the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, he said he wasn’t aware of any such plan by Amazon. Drone operators in India mentioned that they don’t obtain permits from DGCA for purposes such as aerial photography, surveying sites and wild life protection.
In India, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation allows a limited bandwidth of radio frequency for recreational flying by civilians, but has nothing in response to UAVs so far. “We don’t have any regulations for drones right now, but are in the process of preparing some rules,” said Prabhat Kumar, the director general of the DGCA. “We are looking at regulations being developed in other countries for reference.” As of now, he said, we do not even have any specific restriction on how high UAVs can be flown.
In India, small UAVs are now easily available in the market, both online as well as in shops in places like Delhi’s Khan Market or Chandni Chowk. They cost mostly cheaper than a smartphone. And in a country where smartphones savvy country, you can only imagine.
Certain companies, such as Delhi-based Quidich, are already using quadcopters and octacopters to shoot aerial videos and photographs for clients that include filmmakers and television news channels. You can even rent a drone for marriage or a family event video.
Challenges
Flying drones to deliver products have huge set of challenges, especially in a country like India where streets can be shallow, and crowded. Many companies in India have thought about this. But all are worried about the safety aspect. Flying within cities is a challenge as many fear of losing RF communication with the drone. Its very much possible that it can crash into a building, or might attract unwanted attention. The concept might even fly and probably gets shut down soon after when most drones go missing due to theft and natural calamities. Who knows, it might not turn out to be worth.
Drone experts believe that the regulatory reactions to the technology may be fickle and can change with any untoward event. Amazon should be watch for any upcoming regulatory compliance. There’s a good chance that regulatory authorities passes a bill to immediately put a hold/ban on drones. For now we will just have to wait and watch.
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