Imagine living close to an Amazon take-off and landing flight path.

Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz 24/7?

Not over my house, please.

"Not over my house, please."

Not sure how they would manage flight paths.

The options are either

- follow roads / pavements and public paths, like this they're not flying over anyone's property except their own and whoever they are delivering to. The drawback here is that a failure would highly likely lead to accidents / injuries since any falling parcels / drones would fall onto places where you would expect humans and vehicles to be.

- avoid roads as much as possible (they surely would have to cross roads, railway lines etc to effect deliveries), since that gives easier access and shorter paths.

I don't know what the statutory limit on 'airspace' is for a private property. Clearly not infinite, and might vary from place to place, but surely there is a height above which it's legal to fly, and you can't really do anything about it.

For "normal" drones, up to and including 150kg monsters, some of the rules are no less than 150m from buildings, 50m from people, never above crowds, shopping centres etc. That would stop the overwhelming majority of drone delivery flights, but you can get an exemption to these rules by having an Operational Safety Case approved by the CAA. Given the skill, legality and professionalism exhibited by their van drivers, it seems obvious to me that Amazon are not a fit and proper organisation to fly drones, but I'm sure their lobbyists will press for special treatment, and their legal department will expertly fill in the paperwork.

Whether it's economic to meet OSC requirements I can't say, but they are stringent and I'd have thought that parcel delivery wasn't a high enough value task to justify the expense of compliance.

http://publicapps.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP722A_Edition_2.pdf

Only clocked 100 flights total? Or 100 'problem-free' flights? If the second then how many flights ended *with* an incident?

Good luck getting that much clearance in 99% of UK urban/suburban gardens. My Garden is 8 metres wide and 8 metres long but has 2 trees, a covered deck, a shed and a greenhouse so zero chance there, and mine is fairly large for a suburban garden, let alone an urban one.

It's even worse than that, because it's 5 meters on either side. Therefore, at 8 meters wide, you wouldn't have the required clearance even if it was flat. I literally don't know of any private space owned by an individual, except for some super-rich's villa, that would have any spot that satisfies that requirement. Hopefully the new drone is more accurate.

Not forgetting trees, overhead wires, washing lines, ham radio aerials. Difficult to see a use-case for drones in parcel delivery in the UK - in practice they're not so good for heavier stuff, they're not going to be able to carry many consignments, they're unsuitable for dense urban areas, and the proposed type don't look as though they'd have the range to cover rural areas very well, and there's quite a sizeable area of restricted airspace because even airfields without runways or just doing a few glider launches have exclusion zones almost the same size as major international airports. Factor in unfavorable weather and unpredictable things like air ambulance, police, survey helicopters, public events (which drones aren't permitted to overfly), and it starts to seem a very fringe opportunity. It would be interesting to see how many got lost to dog attacks, I suppose.

Of course, if my dobuts are wrong and it does "get off the ground" and we see reasonably widespread use, you know it's going to end up like those crapola battery scratter-scooter rentals, with them getting lost on pavements, roads, hedgerows and in trees, forlornly awaiting somebody to come and retrieve them.

I think they're designed more with US suburbs in mind, lots of space between houses, lots of lawn space, very little foot traffic

I'm suprised amazon has to abide by airspace rules... no other rules seem to apply to them.

Imagine a drone could lift the delivery courier over the fence, so that you don't get woken up by them trying to open your gate and then smashing it on the way out.

As mentioned. most people don't have that much "empty" flat space (lots have no garden at all).

How will these drones comply with UK rules on the many, many areas drones are not allowed (unless operated by a licenced operator who has done the extra qualifications, and cost of an operator would make drone deliveries economically unfeasible compared to low pay (wo)man in a van that usually do amazon deliveries.

And if UK waived rules on where a "self controlled" amazon drone was allowed to fly, then huge backlash from drone enthusiasts who lack those same flying rights.

.. Never had a drone as technically illegal to fly one from anywhere within "my" garden area as anywhere within that small area breaks rules on flying within proximity to neighbouring private properties, so put me off trying a drone when cannot learn the ropes at home first.

It doesn't have to be viable for everybody, just for enough people to make it workable economically. In fact it's probably a plus if it's not viable for most people, in terms of the number of drones and the amount of flying needed. We've got space at work, and there's been plenty of times I could've done with an SSD or something being delivered in an hour.

As for the regulations, the CAA seems to be quite keen on the idea; [1]New trials move the UK closer to allowing everyday drone deliveries and flying beyond visual line of sight . So we could see the necessary regulations in place in the not too distant future.

[1] https://www.caa.co.uk/newsroom/news/new-trials-move-the-uk-closer-to-allowing-everyday-drone-deliveries-and-flying-beyond-visual-line-of-sight/

* deliver to wrong address

* deliver 4hrs after delivery window

* knock on door and leave 3s later

* leave parcel in bin

* leave parcel in plain sight

* drop parcel from great height

* deliver wrong parcel