Amazon announced Monday that he had chosen the city of northern England of Darlington as the first site for the expansion scheduled for the delivery of drones in the United Kingdom.
Amazon should have expanded first air in the United Kingdom and in Italy in 2024. After losing that initial objective, the company decided not to share a temporal sequence for this last launch. Instead, the company has covered its plans, detecting in its announcement that it is still in the early stages and there is “a lot of work to do”. Amazon has yet to submit his application for planning with local authorities or Civil Aviation Authority, the equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States.
“Once these agreements are underway,” observed the company, “we will start hiring team members to launch the delivery of drones”. Amazon has designated a specific fulfillment center in the city of 107,000. He will also raise feedback from Darlington’s residents, as far as expansion is concerned.
As for the United States, the UK’s regulatory body is a bottleneck of the close -ups of Amazon expansion. This is part of the reason why it opted for the smallest cities for tests, rather than the highly regulated air spaces above cities such as New York or London.
Prime Air was launched in June 2022 in Lockeford, California and added the university station, in Texas, the following month.
Amazon subsequently ceased the deliveries of California in April 2024, less than two years after the launch, citing a decision to “give priority to resources (his)”. The company remained in College Station and launched the service to West Valley Phoenix. Since then Amazon has made fun of a third position in the United States which has yet to officially announce.
To date, Prime Air has delivered “thousands” of packages with a target time less than an hour through drones built internally. Once activated, Darlington’s residents will be able to choose the Air Prime option for selected elements via Amazon UK
