Instead of soaring through the air like a magnificent crane, Amazon’s delivery drones ended up smashing into one.
On Wednesday, the e-commerce giant temporarily suspended drone deliveries in the West Valley area near Phoenix, Arizona after two of its MK30 drones collided with a construction crane just miles away from an Amazon warehouse. It’s yet another example of the company’s struggles to achieve Jeff Bezos’ vision of delivering packages right to customers’ doorsteps with autonomous robots.
The crash occurred around 10 am local time. According to the Tolleson Police Department, per CNBC, the drones were flying northeast back-to-back before the collision. One witness told 12News that the drones smashed into the crane while it was lowering an AC unit onto the roof of a building.
Pictures of the wreckage shared by ABC15 Arizona show the drones, which weigh around 80 pounds each, lying on the asphalt and smashed to smithereens, with some of its mangled remains on fire.
No one is believed to have been injured by falling debris, but at least one person at the scene was hospitalized for smoke inhalation, according to local reports.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
“We’re aware of an incident involving two Prime Air drones in Tolleson, Arizona,” Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said in a statement. “We’re currently working with the relevant authorities to investigate.”
This is far from the first issue involving Amazon drones. The company’s Prime Air program, which is currently being tested with customers in Tolleson and College Station, Texas, has been beset with setbacks and is years behind schedule. Its goal is to have drones deliver 500 million packages per year by 2030, which, right now, is looking like a pipe dream.
In 2021, a drone crash in an Amazon testing range in Oregon sparked an acres-wide blaze. And last December, two MK30 drones plummeted hundreds of feet to their doom after their propellers suddenly stopped spinning mid-flight. (An investigation by Bloomberg implicated Amazon’s decision to remove sensors that were present on its older drones in the crash.)
Amazon suspended drone deliveries for months afterwards — but insisted that the crash wasn’t the “primary reason.” Underscoring the engineering struggles, Wired reporting found that the drones couldn’t handle Arizona’s extreme heat.
Following this latest crash, the company resumed drone deliveries in the state while federal regulators continue their probe.
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