The CAA on Thursday announced it selected six projects that will test the self-flying aircraft’s use for delivery to consumers, infrastructure inspection, emergency services, and more. Prime Air, the drone delivery arm of Amazon flying in Texas, was one of the selections.

The trials will feature flights beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the drone operator, relying instead on detect and avoid and other technologies to navigate and avoid obstacles. Further permission will be needed before flights can begin, the CAA said.

The goal of the campaign is to collect safety data to better understand how the drones keep themselves detectable to operators and out of the path of other aircraft.

In March, the CAA published a blueprint laying out how drones could fly routinely in the next five years. The agency also facilitated six drone trials beginning in October of last year and oversaw a drone delivery project off the coast of Scotland conducted by the Royal Mail.

“These innovative trials mark a significant step forward in integrating drones safely into U.K. airspace,” said Sophie O’Sullivan, director of Future of Flight at the CAA. “By supporting projects ranging from consumer deliveries to critical infrastructure inspections, we are gathering essential data to shape future policies and regulations.”

Companies and organizations were invited to bid on their participation in what the CAA is calling innovation sandboxes. These controlled spaces—part of a collaboration with U.K. Research and Innovation—allow participants to test and mature their technology while helping the agency develop drone regulations.

Amazon Prime Air, which announced its ambition to expand to the U.K. last year, is one of the six projects in this round of trials. Another company, Airspection, will test drone inspections of offshore wind farms.

The rest of the participants are organizations or U.K. government agencies.

The National Police Air Service, for example, is looking to add drones to its fleet and will spend six months flying the aircraft BVLOS. NATS Services, meanwhile, will work with several partners to conduct BVLOS inspections over the North Sea.

Another participant, Project SATE (Sustainable Aviation Test Environment), aims to develop a drone hub-and-spoke route network in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland. The final project, called LifeLine, will deliver critical medical supplies such as defibrillators and EpiPens and provide live camera feeds to first responders.

“These have the potential to transform how we deliver goods and provide services, particularly in less well-connected regions,” said Simon Masters, deputy director of U.K. Innovation and Research’s Future Flight Challenge. “These new sandbox projects are a great step towards realizing these ambitions.”

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In a letter to the FAA penned by John Nichols, the mayor of College Station, Texas—one of two locations where Prime Air began flying in 2022—on behalf of the city council he urged the regulator to deny a request that would more than double the service’s range. The mayor cited noise concerns from residents as the chief factor guiding the city’s position.

College Station has become a critical hub for Prime Air, which has struggled to get its drone delivery service off the ground. The city was intended to be one of two key launch markets in addition to Lockeford, California, but the latter service was shuttered in April after a less-than-stellar performance in a little more than its first year.

That leaves College Station as the sole market for Prime Air operations, and Amazon recently bolstered the service by adding on-demand delivery of prescription medications for the flu, asthma, pneumonia, and more. The e-commerce giant is also looking to bring drones to the Phoenix metro area in Arizona and has teased an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy.

Last year, Prime Air unveiled its MK30 drone, which is rangier, quieter, and more durable than its current MK27-2. To integrate the new model into its Texas fleet, the company submitted a draft supplemental environmental assessment to the FAA summarizing the MK30’s potential impacts on College Station residents.

Since the new model can fly in light rain and more extreme temperatures than the MK27-2, Amazon proposes operations 365 days per year, an increase from 260. Flights per day would increase from 200 to about 470 and would take place between 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. CT, removing an FAA restriction limiting flights to daytime hours.

Under the proposal, the company’s operating area would expand from 43.7 to 174 square miles. The expansion to 43.7 square miles happened earlier this year, when the FAA granted Amazon approval to fly its drones where its pilots cannot physically see them. Comparable waivers have been handed out to competitors such as Zipline, Alphabet’s Wing, and UPS’s Flight Forward, similarly allowing those companies to expand their service areas through remote operations.

If approved, the lighter restrictions would allow Prime Air to fly more than 170,000 operations per year in College Station with the MK30, compared to 52,000 with its current model.

Nichols said that the city is excited to be one of the few in the U.S. to host a drone delivery service. But that came with a caveat.

“While the city is supportive of Amazon Prime Air’s efforts, we do not support their request in its entirety,” Nichols wrote. “Since locating in College Station, residents in neighborhoods adjacent to Amazon Prime Air’s facility have expressed concern to the city council regarding drone noise levels, particularly during takeoff and landing, as well as in some delivery operations.”

According to Nichols, residents “have continued” to voice concerns regarding Prime Air’s planned expansion, worrying that the noise will only worsen. The mayor added that the expanded service area could extend beyond the city’s commercial zoning district, which is intended to limit commercial spillover into residential neighborhoods.

“Due to the level of concern from residents, the city would ask to delay the increase in service levels relating to the number of deliveries, as well as the expanded operation days and hours, until additional noise mitigation efforts are implemented by Amazon Prime Air,” Nichols wrote.

Nichols did offer support, however, for the introduction of the MK30, which is expected to be 40 percent quieter than its predecessor. It is unclear whether the new drone would represent sufficient “noise mitigation efforts” in the city council’s eyes, though Nichols said it would have a “positive effect” on residents’ displeasure.

The comment period for the environmental assessment closed on Friday, and the city and Prime Air will now have to wait for the FAA’s decision. Amazon is also awaiting comments and a final decision on a draft environmental assessment for its planned Arizona service.

Should the proposed expansion be rejected, it would represent yet another blow for Prime Air, which so far has not delivered on former CEO Jeff Bezos’ prognostications more than a decade ago.

In that time, competitors such as Zipline and Wing have risen to the top of the young industry—each of those firms has completed multiple hundred thousands of drone deliveries, including outside the U.S.

Prime Air’s future prospects may be bolstered by the MK30, which promises to address some of the company’s problems: namely range, excessive noise, and limitations on deliveries in inclement weather.

Amazon is not the only drone delivery provider contending with unhappy customers. Earlier this month, a Florida man was arrested for shooting down a Walmart delivery drone he said was flying over his house.

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Editor’s note: This article is not intended as an endorsement of the products listed, but rather as a list of options that may be of interest.

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Amazon Prime Air on Thursday said it obtained FAA approval for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone operations, which refer to flights that cannot be directly observed by a human pilot. The company said its new permissions will allow it to immediately expand the delivery area for its MK-27 drone in College Station, Texas, one of two U.S. locations in which it began flying in 2022. Its other service, in Lockeford, California, was shut down in April.

As things stand, BVLOS authorization is considered the king of drone delivery approvals.

In lieu of a final rule on BVLOS flights—which the FAA has been developing for years but has not yet published—the agency awards temporary waivers to individual companies on a case-by-case basis. Some exemptions, called summary grants, allow a firm to piggyback off an approval given to another company if their technologies and business models are sufficiently aligned.

For those without BVLOS waivers, drone delivery areas are often limited to just a few square miles and require human observers, which can put a strain on operations.

Amazon said Prime Air engineers developed a BVLOS strategy that includes an onboard detect-and-avoid (DAA) system, which allows the company’s drones to autonomously dodge planes, helicopters, balloons, and other obstacles.

It shared with the FAA information about the system’s design, operation, and maintenance and conducted flight demonstrations in front of agency inspectors. After observing the technology in action and poring over test data, the regulator issued the approval.

Now, in lieu of human observers, remote drone pilots will oversee the aircraft while Prime Air DAA performs most of the work.

Amazon, which already dominates same- and next-day ground delivery, hopes to deliver 500 million packages per year by drone before the end of the decade. However, the company has been reluctant to provide delivery figures since it came out last year that its Lockeford service had completed just 100 deliveries after several months of availability.

This new exemption could change things. Prime Air in 2020 obtained an FAA Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate, making it one of only five drone delivery companies to have obtained that approval. But a BVLOS waiver may allow it to truly compete with rivals such as Wing and Zipline, both of which received such permissions last year.

The company will start by ramping up in College Station. Later this year, it expects to begin deploying drones from hubs next to its same-day delivery site in Tolleson, Arizona, which is slated to be its next launch market. The idea is to be able to fulfill, sort, and deliver from a single location, strategically positioned to be as close to as many customers as possible.

Connections to nearby Amazon fulfillment centers will allow it to offer millions of items for same-day drone delivery, the company says. It has over 100 such facilities spread across the U.S. and more than 175 globally.

Next up for Prime Air will be adding further U.S. locations in 2025. The company is also planning an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy, where its drones will deliver from those larger fulfillment centers. It said it is working with regulators in both countries to introduce the service as soon as late 2024.

Simultaneously, Prime Air continues to hone the design of its new MK-30 drone, which will eventually replace the MK-27 in the U.S. and be the first Amazon drone flown in the U.K. and Italy. According to Amazon, it can fly twice as far as the company’s current model while emitting half as much perceived noise.

Prime Air’s chief competitor is Alphabet drone delivery subsidiary Wing, which as of May has completed more than 350,000 deliveries worldwide—including in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in partnership with Walmart and Walgreens.

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The unmanned cargo mission, dubbed NS-24, launched from the Blue Origin launch site near Van Horn, Texas, shortly before 11 a.m. CDT. On board its capsule were 33 payloads from NASA and research institutions, including 38,000 postcards from the company’s Postcards to Space nonprofit program.

The flight to the edge of space lasted 10 minutes and 13 seconds.

• READ MORE: Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket Set for Return to Action

The mission had been planned for Monday but was scrubbed due to a ground system issue.

“A special thank-you to all of our customers who flew important science [Tuesday] and the students who contributed postcards to advance our future of living and working in space for the benefit of Earth,” Phil Joyce, senior vice president of New Shepard, said in a statement following the flight. “Demand for New Shepard flights continues to grow, and we’re looking forward to increasing our flight cadence in 2024.”

In September 2022, a booster failure during the launch of the uncrewed NS-23 mission led to a mishap. While the crew capsule was not damaged, the incident prompted a yearlong FAA inquiry. Earlier this year, the company said the mishap was the result of a faulty engine nozzle.

Liftoff #NS24 pic.twitter.com/85wTik0CET

— Blue Origin (@blueorigin) December 19, 2023

The post Blue Origin’s New Shepard Makes Unmanned Cargo Flight appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

This week, the business lost a key executive. First reported by CNBC, Sean Cassidy, who led Prime Air’s safety, flight operations, and regulatory affairs and was Amazon’s primary liaison with the FAA, has stepped down. An Amazon spokesperson confirmed Cassidy’s departure to FLYING, though the company has yet to name a replacement.

A former Alaska Airlines pilot and first vice president of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), Cassidy was brought on in 2015 as Prime Air’s director of strategic partnerships before transitioning to a more expansive role.

As head of safety, flight operations, and regulatory affairs, Cassidy represented Amazon to regulators worldwide, led airworthiness and certification flight programs, and developed public policy initiatives, rulemaking, and regulatory language. He held the position for nearly eight years.

According to an internal company memo viewed by CNBC, Cassidy announced his departure last week.

“This is my last day at Prime Air and at Amazon, so a quick note to pass along my profound thanks to so many of my friends and colleagues here who have made this nearly nine year journey such an amazing experience,” Cassidy wrote.

While Prime Air will no doubt pick a new liaison to the FAA and other aviation regulators, the loss of a familiar face in Cassidy could pose a setback. The departing executive was influential in obtaining several key approvals, including the first standard Part 135 air carrier certificate awarded by the FAA to operate a drone larger than 55 pounds.

Cassidy has been on board for the vast majority of Prime Air’s decadelong existence. The unit was first teased by then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in 2013, when he predicted the service would be operational within two years. That vision did not come to fruition. But at the end of 2022, nearly a decade later, Prime Air drones finally took to the skies above Lockeford and College Station.

Early Turbulence

With a few exceptions—including Wing, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet—drone delivery companies are not yet serving the hundreds of thousands of customers many envisioned they would be by now. Prime Air, however, has struggled with scale more than most. And given Amazon’s bevy of cash and logistics capabilities, as well as the ambitious promises of Prime Air leadership, the firm’s early hiccups have been viewed in disappointing terms.

Trouble began in January, when Prime Air was impacted by companywide layoffs at Amazon. Confidential sources told CNBC the drone delivery unit lost a “significant number” of personnel, while former employees told DroneXL that up to 80 percent of its flight operations team had been let go.

In May, five months after launching its two commercial services, Amazon announced that Prime Air had completed just 100 deliveries—a far cry from the 10,000 trips predicted by vice president David Carbon, a former Boeing executive. The company cited operational restrictions by the FAA on its Part 135 certificate as the culprit.

Among these are limitations on flying at night, over people or roads, and beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of the operator without a visual observer (VO). Under most BVLOS exemptions, the FAA requires VOs to be stationed along the route for safety purposes. Removing them, therefore, can lower an operator’s human capital costs and enable flights over longer distances.

Cassidy’s exit isn’t the only leadership loss Prime Air has faced in recent months. The business also lost chief pilot Jim Mullin and head of flight test operations Robert Dreer—who had been with the company for seven and four years, respectively—in August.

Correcting Course?

Despite its setbacks, Prime Air has soldiered on, and it appears things are beginning to turn around. In October, the company added prescription drone delivery for its College Station customers and announced an international expansion to the U.K. and Italy, where it expects to fly in late 2024. New service locations—including a third, unnamed U.S. market—will be named in the coming months.

Accompanying that announcement was a first look at the firm’s new MK30 drone, which will replace its existing model in the United States. Prime Air said the design flies twice as far as its predecessor while producing half the noise. It can also operate in light rain, hot and cold temperatures, and congested landing areas.

Adding to the recent momentum is a fresh exemption from the FAA, obtained in October. The regulator told FLYING the approval—which authorizes BVLOS flights without VOs—does not yet apply to Prime Air’s commercial services. As a Part 135 operator, the company’s operations specification documents, which are required to be held by certificated providers, do not allow for such flights.

However, the agency said Prime Air now has the opportunity to prove it can fly safely without VOs. If it does so, the FAA can add those permissions to the operations specification.

The regulator told FLYING that Prime Air’s exemption is a summary grant based on one of the BVLOS waivers it awarded in September to four operators: Zipline, UPS Flight Forward, Phoenix Air Unmanned, and uAvionix. Summary grants are essentially streamlined authorizations for “copycat” companies with similar infrastructure, technology, and operations to those who have already been approved.

According to CNBC, Cassidy led Amazon’s efforts to secure the approval, asking the FAA in July to sign off on the removal of VOs. Now, the company will need to find a way forward without its longtime liaison.

CNBC also reported that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is conducting a Class 4 investigation into a November 10 crash at Prime Air’s test site in Pendleton, Oregon, per a federal crash report. No injuries or destruction to the site were reported, though the drone suffered “substantial” damage.

As things stand, Prime Air is playing catch up in an increasingly crowded industry.

Zipline and Wing are the dominant players in medical and consumer drone delivery, respectively, each having made hundreds of thousands of deliveries. Both firms are partnered with Walmart, which has also made thousands of deliveries with a third company, DroneUp. Meanwhile, another operator with more than 150,000 flights logged, Ireland’s Manna, just launched in the U.S. Israel’s Flytrex has also cemented itself as a player.

This likely was not what Bezos envisioned when he revealed Amazon’s drone delivery plans a decade ago, and the loss of Cassidy will surely sting. But with its massive financial and logistical capabilities, the e-commerce giant is always a candidate for a rebound, and there’s still time for it to establish Prime Air as an industry stalwart.

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Amazon has struggled to get Prime Air drone delivery off the ground, but the firm is hopeful it’s found an antidote.

The e-commerce giant on Wednesday announced that Amazon Pharmacy customers in College Station, Texas—one of two locations the company has been flying in since December—can now receive prescription medications via drone in less than an hour. Customers will have access to more than 500 medications treating common conditions such as the flu, asthma, and pneumonia.

“For decades, the customer experience has been to drive to a pharmacy with limited operating hours, stand in line, and have a public conversation about your health situation, or to wait five to 10 days for traditional, mail-order delivery,” said John Love, vice president of Amazon Pharmacy. “With Amazon Pharmacy, you can quickly get the medications you need—whether by drone or standard delivery—without having to miss soccer practice or leave work early.”

The service has potential to benefit the nearly half of Americans who forgo healthcare due to inconvenience or high costs. Amazon declined to say whether it would expand beyond College Station. But the company also offers same-day pharmacy delivery in Indianapolis, Miami, Phoenix, Seattle, and Austin, Texas, priming those cities as future markets.

“We’re taught from the first days of medical school that there is a golden window that matters in clinical medicine,” said Dr. Vin Gupta, chief medical officer of Amazon Pharmacy. “That’s the time between when a patient feels unwell and when they’re able to get treatment. We’re working hard at Amazon to dramatically narrow the golden window from diagnosis to treatment, and drone delivery marks a significant step forward.”

Prime Air’s hexarotor drones fly between around 130 and 400 feet above ground level, which would not conflict with fixed-wing traffic but is still in the neighborhood of helicopters. Built-in sense-and-avoid technology uses sensors and cameras—which feed into a neural network trained to identify objects—to navigate around obstacles such as people, pets, power lines, or other aerial traffic.

Separately, Amazon made a trio of announcements, the most consequential being that its drones will arrive in the U.K., Italy, and another unnamed U.S. city outside California and Texas by late 2024, kicking off Prime Air’s international expansion. The company said it is working closely with regulators in the U.S., U.K., Italy, and the European Union to develop those services, and specific cities will be named in the coming months.

“The future has arrived in Italy,” said Pierluigi Di Palma, President of Italy’s National Civil Aviation Authority (ENAC). “Being chosen by a global player such as Amazon is further confirmation of the strategy pursued by ENAC to push for innovation of advanced air mobility in the aviation industry, creating a national ecosystem favorable to the safe development of new services. Italy’s experience will be an inspiration and support for safe operations in the rest of Europe.”

Baroness Charlotte Vere, the U.K.’s aviation minister, added that Amazon’s entry supports the country’s goal of making commercial drones commonplace by 2030. Early on, customers will be able to order thousands of items for Prime Air drone delivery, including household essentials, beauty products, and office supplies.

Amazon also unveiled the first photos of its MK30 drone, which will replace the company’s MK27-2 drones in the U.S. and will be the first model flown in the U.K. and Italy. The company said the MK30 can fly twice as far and produce half the perceived noise compared to its previous model.

Like the MK27-2, the new design flies autonomously, is equipped with proprietary sense-and-avoid technology, and will deliver packages up to 5 pounds within an hour. But the MK30 will be able to fly in light rain or hot or cold temperatures and deliver more precisely to congested landing zones, such as densely populated suburbs.

If that wasn’t enough buzz, Prime Air provided one more update. Moving forward, drones will be integrated into the company’s delivery network: In the U.K. and Italy, they’ll launch from Amazon fulfillment centers, beginning with one in each country. In the U.S., the drones will take off from same-day delivery sites, smaller versions of those facilities.

Deliveries in College Station and Lockeford, California—the company’s other U.S. market—are currently conducted out of standalone Prime Air Delivery Centers. Soon, drones will depart from the same buildings as the company’s delivery vans, which should help the e-commerce giant keep its ducks in a row.

The fulfillment and same-day delivery sites house items Amazon says are primed for drone delivery, such as cold medicines or AA batteries, Prime Air’s most popular request. The centers were also deliberately built to serve as many customers as possible, making them ideal hubs for drone delivery.

Wednesday’s announcements are the first updates Amazon has provided on Prime Air since May, when it revealed that its two services combined had made just 100 deliveries: a far cry from its goal of 10,000 by year’s end.

That figure pales in comparison to the thousands of U.S. drone deliveries made by Walmart and its partners—or hundreds of thousands in the case of one provider, Alphabet’s Wing, including its services in Australia.

Another Walmart partner, Zipline, is the world’s largest medical drone delivery provider. It has made more than 700,000 deliveries globally, including in Arkansas and Utah in the U.S.

How Pharmacy Delivery Will Work

Despite the Prime Air moniker, College Station residents do not have to be Prime customers to order drone delivery. They will, however, need to onboard with Prime Air and complete a yard survey, after which Amazon will ship them a QR Code delivery marker. Customers will need to position this manually on their doorstep or another location of their choice.

Eligible customers can select the option for “free drone delivery in less than 60 minutes” at Amazon Pharmacy checkout, for no additional charge. A pharmacist will then load the prescription onto the drone, which flies directly to the customer’s doorstep.

“Our drones fly over traffic, eliminating the excess time a customer’s package might spend in transit on the road,” said Calsee Hendrickson, director of product and program management at Prime Air. “That’s the beauty of drone delivery, and medications were the first thing our customers said they also want delivered quickly via drone. Speed and convenience top the wish list for health purchases.”

Once it arrives at the customer’s address, the drone lowers itself over the prepositioned QR Code. Onboard computer vision ensures the path of descent is clear before initiating the drop (literally—packages are released from 12 feet off the ground).

Amazon is one of a handful of FAA-approved air carriers—the others being Wing, Zipline, UPS Flight Forward, and Causey Aviation Unmanned, a longtime partner of Israeli drone delivery firm Flytrex—permitted to conduct commercial drone delivery operations in the U.S. under a standard Part 135 certificate. It’s the only firm authorized to operate drones weighing more than 55 pounds under that approval.

Zipline, which uses a parachute to make deliveries and will soon introduce a tether that lowers a small delivery “droid,” is the dominant player in medical drone delivery, with robust operations in Sub-Saharan Africa since 2016. The company is now growing its services in the U.S. with Walmart and received a lift from its recent FAA beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) approval.

Wing, arguably the most successful retail and restaurant drone delivery provider based on sheer volume, is now also exploring medical delivery in the U.K. and Ireland with partner Apian. Meanwhile, Germany’s Wingcopter and the U.S.’ Spright signed a deal to launch medical deliveries across the continental U.S.

Prime Air’s Progress

The success (or lack thereof) of Prime Air prescription drone delivery and its services abroad may depend on the e-commerce giant’s ability to quickly onboard customers. Wing, for example, also vets potential delivery addresses to ensure there is room for a drone to land, but it doesn’t require customers to initiate that process. It also does not need QR Codes or other infrastructure to be stationed at customers’ homes.

Another hurdle to overcome will be scale. According to CBS News, the company’s operation in Lockeford includes just eight drones, less than half the amount Wing deploys for its newly launched Dallas service. Prime Air’s drones are much bigger than the Alphabet subsidiary’s, which could make it more challenging to maintain a larger fleet.

One factor working in Amazon’s favor is its massive network of delivery infrastructure in the U.S. and worldwide. By integrating Prime Air drones into that latticework of facilities and positioning the aircraft closer to customers, the firm could unlock more demand and agility for its services

Like Wing, Zipline, and other large drone delivery players, Prime Air is backed by a war chest of funding, with the added benefit of being one of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ pet projects. The early returns are discouraging, but Prime Air likely won’t be grounded any time soon.

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First reported by CNBC and confirmed by Blue Origin to FLYING, Smith will step down to be replaced by Amazon senior vice president of devices and services Dave Limp, who recently announced his own departure.

According to Blue Origin, the changing of the guard will happen on December 4, when Smith effectively retires from his role and Limp steps in. Smith will remain with the company until January 2 “to ensure a smooth transition.”

“[Limp] is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset,” a company spokesperson told FLYING. “He has extensive experience in the high-tech industry and growing highly complex organizations.”

The spokesperson also touted Smith’s achievements, pointing to Blue Origin’s $10 billion in customer orders and 10,000-plus employees. However, a quick assessment of the company’s business development timeline and reports of a toxic workplace culture from the past few years paint a tumultuous picture of his tenure. Could Limp help Blue Origin course correct?

Who Is Dave Limp?

Bezos probably hopes Limp is the catalyst Blue Origin needs to supplant SpaceX and Virgin Galactic as the regent of modern space travel. But how will the Amazon veteran fit at his new company?

Limp has spent the past 13 years at marketplace behemoth, where he oversaw the development of several novel, high-tech products. Some—Amazon’s Kindle, Fire TV, and Ring doorbell, for example—were successes. Others, such as Alexa and Echo speakers, were…less so. He was involved with the company’s Zoox autonomous vehicle program and its Project Kuiper internet satellite business, a planned competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink, which gives him some aerospace experience. 

According to CNBC, he worked closely with Bezos when he was still CEO of Amazon and was trusted to launch some of the billionaire’s favorite projects, Alexa and Echo. The new Blue Origin boss was also part of Amazon’s “S-Team,” a small circle of senior executives across most of the company’s business verticals.

Before joining Amazon, Limp started his career with Apple and held executive positions with software firm Liberate Technologies and smartphone maker Palm, both of which are now defunct.

“I’ve worked closely with [Limp] for many years,” Bezos wrote in a note to Blue Origin employees obtained by CNBC. “He is the right leader at the right time for Blue. Dave is a proven innovator with a customer-first mindset and extensive experience leading and scaling large, complex organizations. Dave has an outstanding sense of urgency, brings energy to everything, and helps teams move very fast.”

Note Bezos’ emphasis on speed. With Smith at the helm, Blue Origin has seemingly fallen behind competitors SpaceX and Virgin Galactic in the modern day space race. Let’s break down where things went wrong—and how Limp could right the ship.

First, the Good

“I’m very excited about the operational excellence and culture of innovation this new leader will bring to Blue, building on the foundation we’ve created over the past few years,” Smith said of Limp’s hiring in a note to Blue Origin employees viewed by CNBC.

He concluded the message with “Gradatim Ferociter,” the company’s latin motto which translates to “step by step, furiously.” The first half of that slogan more accurately describes Smith’s tenure—but let’s start with the good.

Bezos appointed Smith as CEO of Blue Origin in 2017 in a bid to accelerate the development of programs such as the reusable New Shepard suborbital launcher and the New Glenn heavy-lift rocket.

Before that, he was with Honeywell Aerospace for 13 years, serving as vice president and chief technical officer before briefly leading the firm’s mechanical systems and components business. He headed development of components in verticals including air transport, business aviation, and defense and space.

Initially, he led the build-out of Blue Origin infrastructure across the U.S. in preparation for the first suborbital launch of New Shepard. That highly anticipated maiden voyage—which carried Bezos and Star Trek actor William Shatner to the Kármán line in 2021—put the company on the map and was arguably Smith’s greatest success.

“Under [Smith’s] leadership, Blue has grown to several billion dollars in sales orders, with a substantial backlog for our vehicles and engines,” Bezos added in his note. “Our team has increased from 850 people when Bob joined to more than 10,000 today. We’ve expanded from one office in Kent [Washington] to building a launch pad at LC-36 and 5 million square feet of facilities across seven states.”

Since then, New Shepard has completed a handful of commercial launches. But Blue Origin was swiftly hit with an FAA mishap investigation in September 2022 after a booster failure during a test of the rocket’s capsule escape mechanism caused it to crash. The spacecraft hasn’t flown since, and things have gone downhill from there.

Tumultuous Tenure

Smith has also struggled to launch New Glenn, which was expected to compete with SpaceX’s Starship for heavy-lift orbital contracts from NASA and other agencies. The launcher’s maiden voyage was pushed back from 2020 to late 2022 after delays in development.

In June, it faced another setback when one of the BE-4 engines designed to power it exploded just 10 seconds into a test. The mishap could create a ripple effect for United Launch Alliance, which will use BE-4s to power its Vulcan rocket—however, the company is reportedly confident it will launch on schedule.

Meanwhile, ULA and SpaceX, arguably Blue Origin’s two biggest rivals, secured a pair of Pentagon contracts at the firm’s expense. And there’s a chance the company is snubbed again for upcoming Space Force military missions in favor of those same competitors. CNBC in July reported that SpaceX and ULA are viewed as the front runners, but “there’s a door open” for Blue Origin to swoop in.

Earlier this year, the firm won a $3.4 billion NASA contract to develop its Blue Moon lander for the space agency’s Artemis V mission, which is scheduled to return humans to the moon before the end of the decade. But that was only a half-victory, considering it missed out on the initial award—which went solely to SpaceX. Blue Origin battled the decision in court but lost.

Another NASA contract calls for New Glenn to launch two Escape and Plasma Acceleration and Dynamics Explorers (ESCAPADE) spacecraft to Mars in 2024. However, there is still no firm launch timeline for the rocket.

New Shepard, meanwhile, will reportedly be back in action next month. It will need to be tested before a potential return to crewed launches scheduled for mid-February, according to Eric Berger of Ars Technica.

Berger unearthed some telling details about how Blue Origin employees perceived Smith.

“Anything is better than Bob,” an anonymous current employee told him.

Berger said he spoke to “dozens” of current and former company employees and that “virtually none of them have had anything positive to say” about Smith’s time with Blue Origin. Last year, close to two dozen anonymous workers accused the departing CEO of fostering a toxic workplace culture characterized by fear, discomfort, and misogyny.

Smith has also come under fire for high turnover, though Blue Origin has since hired aggressively, growing from around 4,000 to 10,000 employees over the past two years.

The Outlook with Limp

Under Smith’s leadership, Blue Origin—once seen as arguably the most promising of a trio of billionaire-backed space tourism firms that also includes SpaceX and Virgin Galactic—has steadily fallen off.

SpaceX, meanwhile, has launched thousands of Starlink satellites and uses its Crew Dragon capsule to conduct International Space Station crew rotation missions for NASA. At the same time, the Elon Musk-led company is dealing with a mishap investigation of its own that has grounded its massive Starship suborbital launcher.

Virgin Galactic has capitalized on both firms’ mistakes. Since June, Richard Branson’s space tourism venture has completed monthly trips to the edge of the atmosphere, each with paying customers. With three commercial missions in the books, the next, Galactic 04, is scheduled for October 5.

All of this means Limp will have some catching up to do. Outside New Shepard, New Glenn, and Blue Moon, Blue Origin is also developing the Orbital Reef private space station, and Smith in July told the Financial Times he hoped to build an international launch site. All of these initiatives will be fighting for Limp’s attention.

Most likely, the new CEO will look to prioritize one piece of the company over the others in a bid to simply get back to orbit. It’s now been more than a year since Blue Origin launched a rocket—and Bezos’ emphasis on speed hints that a rapid return to space is a priority.

New Shepard is a potential suitor for Limp’s focus. The spacecraft is now one year removed from the incident that grounded it, and it could be ready to fly again as soon as next month. Jump-starting the company’s space tourism business could also generate revenue as it struggles to turn a profit on its expensive activities, much like its competitors. Ars Technica’s Berger speculates that Bezos is likely providing about $2 billion per year to keep the dream alive.

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The post Can Blue Origin Course Correct with Amazon’s Dave Limp at the Helm? appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

Last week, the e-commerce giant told CNBC that its Prime Air drone delivery service—which currently serves a smattering of households in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas—has completed just 100 deliveries since launching in late December. Per internal company projections, the firm in January was targeting 10,000 deliveries by the end of 2023.

Now, that projection appears to be in peril. In Lockeford, a town of about 4,000, Prime Air employees said Amazon’s drones serve only two households, each less than a mile from the firm’s local delivery hub.

College Station, which has a population closer to 120,000, may provide more opportunities. But so far, Amazon has failed to capitalize on that market, too.

Amazon did not immediately respond to FLYING‘s request for comment.

There are a few potential drivers for the business’ struggles. Perhaps the largest is the regulatory hurdles it faces. 

Amazon, one of five drone firms to receive FAA Part 135 air carrier certification, would appear to be in a good spot. But those approvals come with major restrictions—in Amazon’s case, they include the ability to fly at night, over people and roads, or beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of a ground observer.

Those restrictions were cemented in November after the FAA rejected several of Amazon’s petitions to ease them. The decision reportedly came as a surprise—according to Prime Air employees, the firm had put up dozens of staffers in hotels in Pendleton, Oregon, home to one of its main test sites, with plans to move them to Lockeford and College Station last summer.

According to the FAA, Amazon did not demonstrate that the MK27-2—its latest drone model, a hexagonal design with six propellers and an onboard sense-and-avoid system—could safely operate near people. The drone’s 80-pound weight also places it outside the purview of the FAA’s Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems rule, muddying the regulatory waters further.

Still, Amazon soldiered on, launching its two services a month later. But soon after, Prime Air was hit with layoffs, and early reports implied less-than-stellar returns in Lockeford and College Station. Now we know exactly how Prime Air has fared: Five months into 2023, it has completed 100 deliveries, or about 1 percent of its goal of 10,000 deliveries this year.

The drone delivery industry was expected to move slowly—and so far it has. But if the rest of the industry is taking its time, Amazon is moving at a snail’s pace.

Currently, Zipline is the industry’s front-runner with 600,000 completed deliveries as of May. Alphabet’s Wing, perhaps the only drone firm that can rival Prime Air’s corporate backing, told FLYING it has made more than 330,000. And DroneUp, the Walmart drone delivery partner that cut jobs last week, said it has made 110,000 deliveries, including 6,000 just last month.

In other words, even if Amazon were on track to hit its 2023 delivery target, it would still fall far short of its key rivals. That’s a sobering outlook given former CEO Jeff Bezos’ initial projections of dominance in 2013.

So how have these firms accomplished what Amazon (so far) could not? The answer lies in regulatory approvals.

Zipline, for example, owns the FAA’s most expansive air carrier approval to date—granted after the agency determined the safety of the firm’s acoustic detect-and-avoid system—allowing it to operate BVLOS and over people. That means its drones can fly where Amazon’s cannot, and the company has leveraged those permissions into robust services in Africa, Asia, and the U.S. 

Zipline also recently secured $330 million in funding to support the launch of P2, its new delivery system that adds a flexible delivery “droid” to the network. The droid will enable more precise deliveries and easier loading of cargo at restaurants and other launch sites.

Regulatory approvals have also given a lift to Wing. Under its Part 135 certificate, the firm can fly BVLOS and over people, which has opened up new U.S. routes and expanded its customer base. That has enabled small services in Virginia and Texas to go with Wing’s complex operations in Australia, where it has partnered with DoorDash and others.

Meanwhile, DroneUp, which flies within a 1.5-mile delivery radius with Walmart under FAA Part 107, is looking to expand its range with new technologies acquired via partnerships. Those include a drone air traffic control system and an autonomous flight system that could help prove to the FAA that its operations are safe for BVLOS.

Why, you may ask, has Amazon been unable to secure these approvals? While the company has gone through several iterations of its drone—including the soon-to-be-released MK30—none have swayed the FAA’s confidence in Prime Air’s safety record.

Several high-profile accidents involving Amazon drones have been reported at the firm’s test facilities, including one in Pendleton that sparked a 20-acre brush fire. Accidents are part of any drone company’s journey, as it turns out. But they appear to be chronic for Prime Air, which has drastically limited its operations.

Another issue appears to be a lack of demand, though it’s unclear what’s causing it. CNBC reported that Prime Air’s Lockeford service has just a handful of signups despite Amazon’s claim that thousands of people “have expressed interest.” The firm says it has been communicating with potential users directly, and some customers even said they were offered gift cards as an incentive.

It could be that the low demand is a symptom of Prime Air’s chosen markets. Lockeford residents, for example, said the drones could startle farm animals in the heavily rural area. Yet Zipline, Wing, and others also fly in rural areas and have experienced no issue garnering new customers. More likely is that FAA flight restrictions have capped Prime Air’s operations—and, by extension, its potential demand in Lockeford and College Station.

“While the FAA broadened Prime Air’s authority to conduct drone deliveries to include sites in California and Texas, the phased process for expanding our service areas is taking longer than we anticipated,” Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit told CNBC.

Whatever the reason for Prime Air’s lack of success, Amazon appears to be committed to getting its drone business off the ground. But it’s going to take much longer than expected.

The post Amazon Says Prime Air Has Completed Just 100 Drone Deliveries appeared first on FLYING Magazine.

But every now and then, innovators give us a peek behind the curtain—if you know where to look.

Welcome to Patent Pending, FLYING’s monthly roundup of the biggest drone, unmanned aircraft systems (UASs), and advanced air mobility (AAM)-related patents. Each month, we’ll save you hours of parsing through U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filings by breaking down the most interesting, outlandish, and eye-popping technologies that have yet to hit the market.

A few notes: Just because a patent was published does not mean it has been granted, and there is no guarantee that a company will develop patented technology. That being said, published patents can provide some insight into a firm’s research and innovation priorities—and a lot of them are just cool.

Here are a few published in April:

Amazon

Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery program may be struggling, but a pair of 2020 patent filings could shake things up.

The first is all about agility. Published on April 25, the filing describes a set of replaceable components for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can be quickly serviced or swapped out. It also details a system for determining the ideal service frequency of each component, allowing for the most frequently serviced parts to be placed in the most accessible locations.

The second, published the same day, describes a new component that could be added to Amazon’s drones. It calls for modular storage units containing bays or compartments that could be used to transport multiple different orders. The filing also describes temperature- and humidity-controlled variations, which could enable deliveries of different categories of goods (i.e. ice cream and chicken wings).

Crucially, these modular units would be reconfigurable. Amazon describes a scenario where one unit can be installed and removed from multiple UAVs, depending on the storage needs of each delivery. That could allow the company to consolidate several trips into one.

BETA Technologies

Shifting gears from delivery drones to passenger electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, air taxi developer BETA Technologies also had two patents published last month—and both were filed around this time last year.

One, filed last April, describes a hybrid propulsion system for fixed-wing eVTOL. The system would rely on a “power unit pod” containing an electricity-producing auxiliary power unit and a fuel tank containing traditional jet fuel, kerosene, gasoline, or hydrogen gas. The goal, it seems, would be to extend the range of the aircraft.

A second BETA patent filed a month later, focuses on what happens on the ground. It lays out a service system that would charge the firm’s aircraft, including a cooling mechanism to regulate the temperature of the battery. It would also measure how much charge the aircraft has left.

Honeywell

While BETA examines an emerging fuel source for passenger aircraft, Honeywell has its eye on the future of fuel for small UAVs.

Electric batteries are currently the standard for small drones. But a 2019 Honeywell patent filing describes a hydrogen fuel cell-based generator that could charge both battery-electric and fuel cell-powered drones. Power from the generator would be transferred to a controller, where a drone could land and charge.

The solution is designed to be lighter and more compact than a typical fuel cell-based generator, requiring no net water consumption, which eliminates the need for a water fuel reservoir. But according to the filing, it would also enable up to 12 times the run and flight time of a typical lithium-ion battery.

The U.S. Navy

The U.S. military is no stranger to UAVs and UASs, having awarded a multitude of contracts to drone firms and others. But the Navy last month had one of its own innovations published.

Essentially, it’s a catch-and-release system for friendly UAVs. Filed in 2021, the patent describes a system that uses small robotic arms to secure a drone to a landing platform, where it can then charge and be released back into the air.

In order to properly align itself, the platform would be able to swivel or move side-to-side along a groove. According to the filing, the system is “primarily designed for use on a moving landing platform”—like a ship.

And a Few More Patents

Now, let’s get into some fun ones.

Hong Kong-based Hex Technology is looking at building drones that can “mate” (not in the typical sense, of course). A 2020 filing describes a UAV design that includes an opening and a recess at either end of the fuselage, allowing the drones to land on top of each other and be stored in a stack. Moreover, they’d be capable of taking off while stacked, reducing the space required to house a swarm of drones.

At the other end of the fun spectrum, the most dystopian-sounding drone patent published last month came from Liberty Mutual—and yes, I’m talking about the insurance company. In a 2019 filing, LiMu describes a drone equipped with an array of sensors to be used in an array of insurance applications, like home inspections.

The company imagines aircraft with digital and thermal cameras or sensors that monitor heat, light, sound, air quality and a host of other conditions, which could be used to inspect roofs, construction sites, amusement parks or any number of settings. But if you ask me, I wouldn’t want Liberty Mutual drones buzzing around my house.

Luckily, this next innovation involves UAV tech that would operate far from home. Filed in 2020 by Japan’s NTT, a patent describes a truly amphibious drone capable of moving not just through the air and on the ground, but also over water.

NTT, a communications company, would use this amalgamation of a UAV to inspect manholes without a human. It would be able to fly to an inspection site; land on the ground; position itself over the manhole; enter through the opening; and land on top of any water that has accumulated at the bottom. Then, it could take photos of the manhole’s interior.

Similarly, the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, or Aramco, filed a patent in 2021 for UAV technology that could inspect congested pipelines. The system would be used to locate and track scrapers, which are essentially a cleaning mechanism for pipeline settings.

A handful of the patents outlined above—like BETA’s recent filings—will make it into development. Others, like Liberty Mutual’s home inspection drone, won’t—I hope. But they represent a glimpse into the world of advanced aviation innovation.

The post Amazon, Beta Air, U.S. Navy Published Patents Last Month appeared first on FLYING Magazine.