I was talking about this concept to a mate around the beginning of this year. I don’t know what made me think about it then, but I did. Not in connection with Amazon, but for small firms in Perth that need to deliver small packages to the suburbs.

Amazon Prime Air: Delivery by Drones Could Arrive As Early as 2015

With Prime Air, Amazon is hoping to deliver packages
with drones.   Courtesy Amazon

For the next few weeks UPS, FedEx and the U.S. Postal Service will be working overtime to make sure you get your holiday gifts on time, but if Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos gets his way, in the future, it might be delivery drones working those extra hours.

In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday evening, Bezos unveiled Amazon Prime Air, a service that delivers packages via autonomous drones. With the service, Bezos said he hopes that the company will be able to deliver packages into customers hands within 30 minutes of the time they place an order.

Yes, with GPS on the drone, just enter the delivery address and phone to tell the customer to expect a parcel on his front lawn within the hour. The drone then does another drop, or returns to the shop.

BUT!  How are they going to cope with:

• The danger of hitting power lines if too low.
• The danger of interfering with aircraft if too high.
• The danger of hitting other firms’ drones. (I’ve always wondered how the hell flying cars would work. It would be chaos in the skies, and people would die from collisions. Stupid idea, unless the flying cars are restricted to defined paths, and that would lead to traffic jams. Also, interference with aircraft … )
• The cost of insurance! The consequences of hitting anything could be very, very expensive, not to mention dangerous.
• Getting approval from the Civil Aviation authorities. Hah.

And it would only apply to cities with an Amazon distribution centre. That rules Perth out. So it’s a great idea and may get up some day, but pigs might fly first.