By Matt Day | Bloomberg
Amazon.com is pausing all commercial drone deliveries after two of its latest models crashed in rainy weather at a testing facility.
The company said Friday it was immediately suspending drone deliveries in Texas and Arizona to fix the aircraft’s software. It’s the latest setback for a program inching toward widespread commercial service more than 11 years after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced an initiative to build drones capable of delivering products to customers in less than half an hour.
In a previously unreported December incident, two MK30 drones crashed during flights at the Pendleton, Oregon, airport Amazon uses for testing, with one catching fire on the ground. The company later discovered a software issue was to blame, related to the light rain the aircraft were flying through at the time.
The MK30 drones, cleared to commence operations by the Federal Aviation Administration in October, have been delivering packages to customers’ homes in College Station, Texas, and Tolleson, Arizona, a suburb near Phoenix. The six-propeller machine is designed to be lighter and quieter than its predecessor, the MK27-2, and fly in light rain.
“We’re currently in the process of making software changes to the drone and will be voluntarily pausing our commercial operations,” Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson said in a statement after Bloomberg inquired about the recent crashes. Deliveries will resume once the updates are completed and approved by the FAA, Stephenson said. Employees at the drone sites, who were told of the action Friday, will continue to be paid during the pause.
“Safety underscores everything we do in Prime Air and our MK30 drone is safe and compliant,” Stephenson added. “It’s designed to safely respond to unknown events in a known way, and the overall architecture of the drone has performed as expected.”
Amazon’s drone operation, called Prime Air, aims to deliver some 500 million packages a year by the end of the decade. The unit reached a key regulatory milestone in the US last year, receiving authorization from the FAA to fly its craft beyond their remote operators’ visual line of sight. But Prime Air’s reach remains limited to narrow trials in Arizona and Texas.
A test site in California was shuttered last year. Last month, the company completed its first test flight in Italy and aims to launch wider service this year. The company is also seeking clearance to begin making deliveries in the UK.
During another previously unreported episode, in early September, two aircraft collided in an apparent case of operator error. The company was testing how the MK30 would perform if one of the vehicle’s propellers failed, according to an FAA account of the incident.
Operators launched one drone at the Pendleton test range, had it complete a mock delivery and then triggered a planned motor failure.
The drone began to fly to an alternate landing pad. But Amazon operators launched another test flight in error while the first was still en route to the pad. The second drone, programmed to suffer its own motor failure during its initial ascent, started flying to the same alternate landing pad.
An Amazon manager on site recognized the sound of the second motor failure and shouted an order for the operator to land the second craft, the FAA account said. Someone relayed the command to the designated pilot, who was monitoring both craft. It was too late. The drones collided about 130 feet over the alternate landing pad, their wings interlocked, and spiraled to the ground.
Amazon says it changed its operating procedures and training following the crash. The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating the September and December crashes and didn’t immediately provide comment.
“The purpose of these tests is to push our aircraft past their limits – it would be irresponsible not to do that,” spokesperson Stephenson said. “We expect incidents like these to occur in those tests, and they help us continue to improve the safety of our operations.”
The drone crashes aren’t Amazon’s first. A Bloomberg investigation chronicled five incidents over a four-month period in 2021, including one that sparked a brushfire at the Pendleton airport and prompted federal regulators to question the airworthiness of the MK27-2.
Former employees told Bloomberg at the time that Amazon had cut corners on safety protocols in the interests of keeping tests going, including by running trials with team members who had to jump between multiple roles during a flight. Amazon has denied this.
There were at least four additional crashes in 2022, three of which were the result of sudden power loss, according to FAA records. And in November 2023, Amazon temporarily paused operations after an MK27-2 crashed in Pendleton when its battery ran out of juice, according to an NTSB account. The company subsequently began requiring drone operators to measure battery pack voltage as a backup to the craft’s automated monitoring.