Amazon's Drone Delivery Service Off To Slow Start, Served Less Than 10 Houses In First Month

Amazon Inc.‘s AMZN Prime Air has served less than 10 households roughly a month after its first deliveries in California and Texas.

What Happened: An Amazon spokesperson hasn’t denied the lackluster performance of delivery drones but said the company is planning to expand Prime Air services in the regions following Federal Aviation Administration, or FAA approval, reported The Verge. 

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One of the biggest reasons Amazon has fewer drone deliveries is that these unmanned vehicles require employees to act as spotters. However, FAA no longer requires Amazon to have as many as six human beings with each flight. 

The company has laid off many employees now in California and Texas as it doesn’t need extra hands to control the drones. 

The second reason could be customers’ hesitancy regarding the safety of these drone deliveries — and not without some reasonable causes. 

In September last year, a drone from Wing, a subsidiary of Google’s parent company, crashed into overhead power lines, causing thousands of homes in the neighborhood to go without electricity. 

While Amazon’s drone deliveries might not have had a good month, Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood thinks that the e-commerce giant’s use of automated robots will dramatically change its workforce in upcoming years, according to a report in CNBC.  

“Amazon is adding about a thousand robots a day… If you compare the number of robots Amazon has to the number of employees, it’s about a third. And we believe that by the year 2030, Amazon can have more robots than employees,” Wood stated. 

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