Delivery Drones Could Save Amazon Billions

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) took an important step towards making delivery drones a reality earlier this week.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued the tech giant a Part 135 air carrier certificate, joining Alphabet's Wing and UPS, which have also earned the certificate. Amazon plans to continue testing the technology before delivering packages via drone.

In 2013, CEO Jeff Bezos famously went on "60 Minutes" and showed a video of a Prime Air drone successfully delivering a package, and predicted that drone delivery would be standard within five years. That, of course, hasn't come to pass, as the project has been bogged down in a bureaucracy that doesn't have a template for regulating unmanned aerial vehicles. Still, delivery drones are likely to become a reality at some point, as they offer a number of advantages over traditional delivery. Not only are they much faster, as Amazon aims to make drone deliveries within 30 minutes, but they also have advantages for communities around them by eliminating traffic and fossil fuel emissions.

Source Fool.com