Prime Air (drone)

2023: Dismissal of Division Employees

In mid-January 2023, it became known that Amazon intends to reduce the staff of the division that deals with parcel delivery technologies using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

We are talking about the Prime Air department. Earlier, Amazon announced its intention to reduce staff by about 18 thousand employees. As it now turns out, this program will affect, among other things, the failed drone delivery unit. Prime Air employees reportedly began receiving notice of layoffs effective January 18, 2023. The Prime Air department will lose "a significant number of employees," it said.

Amazon begins laying off employees of disastrous delivery unit

Workers have been laid off in several regions, including Seattle, where Amazon is headquartered. The company's site in Pendleton, Oregon, has been hit particularly hard, with roughly half of the team cut here. Moreover, Amazon itself does not say how many Prime Air employees were fired.

Prime Air CEO David Carbon, a former Boeing employee, said that by 2030 the company intends to deliver 500 million parcels using drones to millions of customers in major cities such as Seattle, Boston and Atlanta. However, in the current macroeconomic situation, it will not be possible to achieve the planned indicators. Therefore, Prime Air is forced to "reckon with slowing growth" and adjust staff numbers. Company executives "prioritize what is most important for customers and long-term business development." The abbreviations will affect the teams of Prime Air design, maintenance, system development, flight tests and flight operation. Sources with knowledge of the Prime Air situation say a reduction in the drone delivery business was expected given the division's many difficulties.^[1]

2021: Amazon's drone delivery project fails

In early August 2021, Wired released material on the problems of the Amazon Prime Air unmanned delivery program in the UK. According to the publication, this project has lost more than 100 employees, and insiders claim that it is falling apart before our eyes, including due to mediocre leaders.

Citing evidence from former employees, the publication describes a culture of managerial dysfunction and general overworking. For example, in February 2020, Amazon closed a team of several dozen people in the UK that analyzed drone footage to identify people and animals, but reopened the unit a few months later. Other stories cited in the report include the rapid turnover of management; an employee drinking beer at a desk in the morning; an employee who presses the approve button (OK - default) on their computer so that all personnel is approved in the shortest possible time, regardless of whether there were dangers in them or not.

Amazon's drone delivery project was a failure

As one former worker put it in an interview:

Things started to crumble because Amazon piled on too much, put people who knew nothing about the project and inflated sales. This is all one gigantic bust-up - so many promises that could not be fulfilled.

An Amazon spokesman said the company would continue Prime Air's presence in the UK, but did not confirm current or future headcount.

It's unclear how the dysfunction described in the report extends to Amazon's overall self-driving delivery program, which was first announced back in 2013. Obviously, the company exaggerated the ease of implementing the technology in its plans, although in June 2019 it promised that it would launch a delivery service in November 2021. In August 2020, Amazon finally received permission from the FAA to deliver packages to the United States, which it called one of the main deterrents, but has not yet given a timeline for when this will all work in practice.

Amazon has positioned the UK as a major market for its technology, announcing in 2016 that it had carried out its first real drone delivery in Cambridge, England. But it was a stunt using a pre-arranged order and itinerary, Amazon never offered commercial delivery in the UK.

While Wired's report focuses on work in the UK, some of the issues outlined in the article could affect Amazon's overall drone ambitions. These include the company's desire to plant its drones to deliver parcels, which requires especially careful navigation and configuration, for ON example, a competitor in the form of Wing, which, on the Google contrary, delivers parcels without descending to the ground.

When The Verge approached Amazon for comment, their representative did not deny any aspects of the Wired report, but said the company made organizational changes to the Prime Air business and was able to find vacancies for affected employees in other areas where staff selection was available.^[2][3]

2019: Announcement of courier drones flying 25km

In early June 2019, at a conference in Las Vegas, Amazon unveiled new drone couriers that allow customers to deliver packages within 30 minutes. At the same time, the new drones are capable of flying up to 25 km and carrying goods weighing up to 5 pounds (2.3 kg), that is, most of the company's products.

For years, the company has struggled with tough rules restricting commercial flights, particularly in, and is USA now trying to convince regulators that their courier drones are safer than humans. Amazon Consumer Services Executive Director Jeff Wilke noted that the Prime Air drone has a vertical take-off and landing function, is more stable than previous models, and is able to better recognize moving objects.

The new drone is equipped with thermal imaging cameras, depth cameras and an obstacle detection sonar, and with machine learning, on-board computers will be able to automatically adjust the flight.

Amazon unveils new drone that also combines vertical and level flight capability but has simpler design

The drone rotors are completely closed for safety, and these covers are not a useless cargo - they serve as wings during a long flight. The drone has six degrees of freedom (the usual quadcopter has only four), which provides more dynamic and accurate movement of the courier in the air. The design allows the drone to use all six propellers for both forward flight and landing takeoff. Delivery packages are located in the fuselage in the center of the drone.

At the conference, the company showed viewers a video to demonstrate the drone's transformations in the air. Amazon said it was going to launch a delivery service using a new drone in the coming months, but did not say where it would conduct the tests or how many customers would be able to reach.^[4]

Notes