Amazon gets FAA approval for its drones to deliver packages

An Amazon drone — (Image credit: MARK RALSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

Amazon has received federal approval to use its fleet of Prime Air drones to deliver packages to customers, the Federal Aviation Administration said Monday. The approval gives the online retail giant broad privileges to "safely and efficiently" using small drones to carry packages "beyond the visual line of sight" of operators, CNBC reports. Now that it has the FAA certification, Amazon will start testing customer deliveries. Amazon said it isn't ready to widely deploy the drones, but the certification "is an important step forward for Prime Air" allowing the company to continue refining the technology, which it started testing in 2013 with a goal of shortening delivery times for many items to 30 minutes or less.

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Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.