[ereckers]

Does anyone know of a good video or presentation that both describes and visually shows us how this will work in practice?

I've seen the earlier news clips showing the drone delivering a package to the back porch of a house, which got a simple shrug out of me, but how's this envisioned at scale?

Do I look out my second story window and see a drone pass by every 10 minutes? Or is there initial use cases outside of residential that will be the first to adopt the technology?

I just want to see it with my own eyes, before actually seeing it with my own eyes.

[cmurf]

Amazon's been ripping on the FAA since the beginning, about how the FAA needs to do XYZ+5001 things. And yet Amazon has hardly come up with a plan of its own to answer some basic questions such as yours.

FAR 91.119 in part says: "no person may operate an aircraft below...an altitude allowing, if a power unit fails, an emergency landing without undue hazard to persons or property on the surface."

There are numerous regulations that should apply to drones, just as there are ones that shouldn't, and ones yet to be written unique to drones. But has Amazon provided any input on the existing regulatory paradigm? I haven't heard anything but whining.

I don't see how, or why, an autonomous aircraft should be exempt from the regulation cited above. It's the same thing we expect of other aircraft. We're talking about ~50lb (plus or minus, what, 40lb?), at up to 400' above the ground, at up to 100mph. As a pilot of both single and multi-engine airplanes, I'm very appropriately expected to be at an altitude and location that in the event of a power plant failure I can prevent on-ground injuries. We can't just let companies throw up their hands and say "yeah, it's a problem we're working on, but we must not have deliveries impeded in the meantime!"