Amazon Gets Approval for Experimental Drone Use

Federal regulators on Thursday cleared Amazon to begin using drones for a limited number of outdoor test purposes.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued an "experimental airworthiness" certificate to Amazon for research, development, and crew-training.

Amazon's interest in using drones for commercial use—such as delivering books or other merchandise via the nascent technology—has grown immensely in recent years.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos first publicly mentioned plans for drone delivery during a 60 Minutes segment that aired more than a year ago, when he announced Prime Air, a service being designed to deliver packages to customers in under 30 minutes.

"Technology is not going to be the long pole," Bezos told Business Insider last year. "The long pole is going to be regulatory."

The certificate given to Amazon is limited to flights under 400 feet and to only during daylight hours in "visual meteorological conditions." Any drone must remain in the line of sight of the pilot, who must possess at least a private pilot's certificate.

The rules also ask Amazon to provide monthly data to the FAA detailing the drone flights the company logs.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The FAA rolled out its set of regulations on commercial drones in February, following several delays. Under those rules, drones need to stay within 500 feet of the ground, cannot fly faster than 100 miles per hour, and must remain in the pilot's line of sight.

Those rules appeared to put Amazon's drone aspirations on ice, as the line-of-sight requirement, as well as a restriction on dropping items from drones, would make package delivery seemingly impossible. The FAA did, however, say at the time that it was considering issuing more-flexible rules for a smaller class of "micro-drones."

The e-commerce juggernaut had threatened to move its drone-development project overseas if the FAA did not agree to ease its restrictions.