'We had people come just to see it': Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone

The unmanned aircraft can drop off 100 parcels a day within a 12km radius of Amazon's hub. 9 hours ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Emma Simpson Business correspondent Amazon has become the first retailer in the UK to start a drone delivery service with a limited launch in Darlington, County Durham. The tech giant is convinced there is demand for ultra-fast deliveries and hopes to slowly expand the service. Rob Shield let Amazon use an Airbnb on his farm for its first test runs. "The certainty is people have never told us they want their stuff slower," says David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air.

In the UK, Amazon's drones currently deliver within two hours, but Carbon says the current average delivery time in the US is 36 minutes. Amazon will carry out a maximum ten flights an hour, or up to a hundred deliveries a day on weekdays. Darlington is an interesting case study but shows drone deliveries are not easy, says Dr Anna Jackman, an associate professor of geography at the University of Reading. And the reality is [drone deliveries] don't work well in high-rise buildings." She added that while there are ideas to develop rooftop deliveries and centrally-located hubs "right now we're not there yet". In Darlington, eligible customers will need a garden or yard for a drone delivery.

Amazon is using its most modern drone, the MK30, in Darlington. As the drone approaches each drop-off point, it knows exactly where to release the package using GPS. "This is effectively an autonomous drone that can do what a pilot does in a flight deck. Amazon already uses drones for deliveries in five US states. In early February, an MK30 drone making a delivery hit the side of an apartment building in a suburb of Dallas in Texas.

The drone fell to the ground, breaking apart. Carbon says the drone had drifted slightly having lost the GPS signal and clipped the building's gutter on the way out. Since then, Amazon has stopped deliveries to these types of apartments. That's what Amazon is doing in Darlington, but the drone will also be remotely tracked by an operator watching from computer screens back at base and liaising, when needed, with air traffic controllers at the nearby Teesside Airport. Darlington is the only place outside the US where Amazon is doing drone deliveries.

Amazon has secured temporary protected airspace, which is necessary for autonomous drone flights under current rules. Drone deliveries got a mixed response from some we spoke to. The launch also took longer than Amazon had originally pledged, after saying in 2023 the service would start the following year. Amazon Online shopping Retailing Drones Delivery services The unmanned aircraft can drop off 100 parcels a day within a 12km radius of Amazon's hub. 'We had people come just to see it': Amazon delivers its first UK parcels by drone