Here's Why Amazon Drone Package Delivery May Never Happen

Amazon Prime Air

Amazon Prime Air: Your package is here

Drones! Amazon! The future is here!

With one 60 Minutes appearance, Jeff Bezos got the tech world extremely excited about the potential for drone delivery of small packages directly to our homes.

But before we start thinking of ordering of The Everything Store via Octocopter, let's slow down and examine this crazy idea.

Here are just a few reasons why I have doubts about Amazon Prime "Air":

FAA Moves Extremely Slow

First, the FAA just released a drone (UAV) roadmap for the next five years, something it took them some three decades to put together after a 1981 advisory memo on UAVs. The roadmap, released in early November, outlines a number of requirements necessary for the expansion of use of UAS (unmanned aircraft systems), but it doesn't address the massively scaled commercial use envisioned by Bezos. I think such a service would require them to make some significant adjustments and policy decisions, something that could take long time given past precedent.

So. Many. Drones.

Amazon ships a lot of packages, in case you didn't already know. At peak last year, Amazon sold 306 items per second, which is about 26 million per day. While much of these is digital goods, if we figure if Amazon ships just one tenth of this 26 million - 2.5 million - per day in physical product form, and also figure half of those would be delivered by drone, that's over 1.2 million drone flights a day. If an average drone can deliver 1 package per hour, that translates to a fleet of 50 thousand drones. That could mean 100 thousand drone flights over New York City on a busy day.

That's a lot of drones in the skies. Would the government, security officials, and civilians who like to look upward and not see the sky dotted with buzzing octocopters allow such a thing?

Is It Really Cheaper?

While Bezos' drone-delivery vision may be predicated on fully computerized (including remote pilot) delivery, as of now I think the FAA would probably require actual people piloting these drones remotely. If that's that case, a fleet of 100 thousand drones and a busy day of 50 thousand or so flying simultaneous operations would require a huge number of highly qualified personnel to actually pilot these flights. Ok, maybe drone operator will make the "hot job" for Forbes in 2020, but I'm not sure Bezos wants to pay 100 to 200 thousand drone operators - even if they are working in some low-cost overseas local- it would take to operate a 24/7 drone delivery service.

Watch Out Below!

The biggest hurdle for drone delivery service will be safety. If the FAA approves such a massively-scaled commercial delivery network - a big if - it would require extensive safety measures. And even with an extensive safety framework in place, system failure, pilot error and malicious or intentional efforts to bring down drones will mean some potential serious dangers to the public. All it will take is one major accident due to an Amazon drone for it to result in a PR nightmare, angry politicians, and tort lawyer feeding frenzy.

Will it happen? I would never rule out Bezos, who is perhaps the most forward-looking CEO we have today. But the amount of hurdles to the drone delivery network envisioned by Bezos could mean it could take at least a decade - or more - to reach his vision.

But if Bezos' crazy idea does work, I'm looking forward to having the Amazon Prime Air tell-all book by Brad Stone delivered - via drone - in 2023.

Michael Wolf is chief analyst for research firm NextMarket Insights. You can read his blog here, follow him on Twitter, or subscribe to his podcast on iTunes

Michael Wolf is a technology analyst, advisor and founder of NextMarket Insights (www.nextmarket.co). He is one of leading authorities on the connected home, and has ad...