In 2013, CBS’s Charlie Rose visited Jeff Bezos at his Seattle, Washington Amazon campus. At the start of the interview, Bezos told Rose that he had a great surprise to share with him. Bezos proceeds to bring Rose into a room where Rose instantly becomes excited by what he sees on a table in the center of the room. Bezos goes on to explain, “These are octocopters. These are effectively drones, but there’s no reason that they can’t be used as delivery vehicles.” He then shows Rose a prerecorded demonstration of a drone making a delivery and says, “I know this looks like science fiction, it’s not.”

Since that 60 Minutes interview, Amazon has been slowly rolling out their vision of a drone delivery program. And they aren’t the only ones to venture into the idea of rapid last-mile deliveries via drones. Soon after Amazon announced their plans to make same-day deliveries possible with drones, Walmart too began developing a drone program. However, there has always been one major obstacle in seeing this idea come to fruition.

This obstacle is known as BVLOS, Beyond Visual Line Of Sight. According to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), a drone must be within line of sight of its pilot at all times to be safely flown. This is not an unfair rule by any means. If a pilot were to lose visual sight of its drone, a lot could go wrong. This FAA regulation was never intended to limit the use of drones but to ensure they are used in a way that promotes safety for anyone involved. As time has gone on and the demand for broader drone operations has become apparent, the FAA has been tirelessly working with many in the drone industry to safely enable BVLOS operations.

When Bezos announced his Amazon Prime Air vision, he predicted it would be available to the public by 2019. Needless to say, a lot more research and development had to go into the program, and that 2019 deadline came and went. In fact, the success of drone delivery programs started through the trials of smaller operations using drones to deliver medical supplies. In 2019, Zipline began delivering blood, platelets, plasma, and medications with drones in Rwanda. Soon the program was expanded to Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, Japan, and finally parts of the United States.

Zipline, founded by Keller Rinaudo out of Half Moon Bay, California, was pivotal in shaping the future of drone deliveries. By working with the Rwandan government, Zipline was able to prove the safety of BVLOS drone operations. It helped that the drones were being flown over remote areas. If there was a chance for a drone to have an accident, there was little chance that it could injure anyone in the process. Still, Zipline’s drone platforms proved safe enough that in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zipline was granted a Part 107 waiver to begin delivering medical supplies to facilities in North Carolina.

Around the same time that Zipline began using drones for deliveries in North Carolina, Amazon was also granted a special Part 107 waiver to begin preliminary drone delivery tests in remote areas. As Bezos told Rose back in 2013, “We can do half-hour delivery, and we can carry objects, we think, up to 5 lbs, which covers 86% of the items we deliver.” By 2022, Amazon began drone delivery trials in Oregon and California. Those participating in the trial were given a limited list of items to order from. The success of these trials soon saw Amazon move testing to more populous areas in Texas.

Towards the end of May 2024, Amazon announced that the FAA had granted them clearance to begin BVLOS drone deliveries out of its College Station, Texas facility. After running the BVLOS drone program in Texas, Amazon went on to announce, “Our fastest click-to-delivery time in the fourth quarter of 2023 was 15 minutes and 29 seconds, for a box of Annie’s Cocoa and Vanilla Bunny Cookies.”

It seems like a lifetime ago when Bezos first introduced the idea of making rapid deliveries with drones. Even though providing customers with the fastest delivery options is of huge importance to Amazon, safety always comes first. Amazon proudly said that they spent years “developing, testing, and refining our onboard detect-and-avoid system to ensure our drones can detect and avoid obstacles in the air.” It is this time and dedication that will hopefully see Amazon continue to expand drone delivery options.

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