The French postal service has been given the go-ahead to start delivering parcels using drones.

France's airspace regulator, the General Directorate for Civil Aviation, cleared the drones for take off. But that doesn't mean French skies will suddenly be abuzz with unmanned aircraft—at present, the drones will only work on a prescribed nine-mile route once a week in the southern region of Provence, as a feasibility test for the tech and regulations.

The trial is being run by DPDgroup, an international subsidiary of French national postal service Le Groupe La Poste. The drone will travel from a pickup point in Saint-Maximin-La-Sainte-Beaume to Pourrières in the Var department, a region that has been chosen because it hosts a number of start-up companies, including a dozen specialising in tech.

DPDgroup—which has been working on the project for more than two years with French drone startup Atechsys—said it was "a new way of addressing the issue of last-mile deliveries, especially when it comes to areas that are difficult to access." The firm is particularly keen to use drones to deliver to remote areas, like mountain villages, islands, and rural areas.

A delivery terminal has been developed that assists drones at take-off and landing, and secures it while it's being loaded and unloaded. After 600 hours of flight time, the drone apparently managed an autonomous delivery across a distance of 8.7 miles, carrying a package that weight 1.5kg, back in September 2015.

This puts the project neck-and-neck with the Amazon drone delivery service that's currently being developed in Cambridge in the UK, and which carried out its first delivery last week.

DPDgroup claims its drone has a range of up to 20km (12.4 miles), and can carry a payload of 3kg and a top speed of 30kmph (18.6mph). Its navigation system has a range of around 50km (31 miles). It's also equipped with a parachute, in case of emergency.

In the UK, Amazon has an agreement with the Civil Aviation Authority to allow the retail giant to operate multiple drones out of line-of-sight. The American FAA has yet to agree to anything similar, but it has recently allowed another company to operate drones beyond line of sight.