Commercial drone operators will be banned from letting unmanned aircraft out of their sight, under new US proposals that come as a major blow to companies like Amazon that were hoping to use the unmanned aircraft to make aerial home deliveries.

Amazon said the proposed new Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) rules, which were outlined in a conference call with reporters on Sunday morning, would prevent it from operating such a service in the US and could force it to develop the technology overseas instead.

“The FAA needs to begin and expeditiously complete the formal process to address the needs of our business, and ultimately our customers,” Paul Misener, Amazon vice-president of gobal public policy, said in a statement to the Guardian. “We are committed to realising our vision for Prime Air and are prepared to deploy where we have the regulatory support we need.”

Amazon threatens to take drone testing abroad as US delays approval Read more

Testing of Amazon’s Prime Air technology has been taking place at an indoor facility in Washington state, but the company recently expanded its research and development team in Cambridge in the UK and has threatened to switch investment to more sympathetic regulatory environments.

Asked about the threat from Amazon to move abroad, US officials insisted they were moving as fast as they could to respond to advances in automated safety systems and would consider whether to allow exemptions in future.



“We know that technology is changing very rapidly,” US transport secretary Anthony Foxx told the Guardian. “We are not done yet and we are going to continue working to ensure we are moving as quickly as possible but also as safely as possible to ensure that we integrate these new technologies into the airspace.”

Amazon fears that simply implementing the existing rule proposals may take too long, even though the administration has been examining the issue for at least two years.

“The FAA’s proposed rules for small UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] could take one or two years to be adopted and, based on the proposal, even then those rules wouldn’t allow Prime Air to operate in the United States,” said Misener.

The FAA insists its new rule would not necessarily prohibit automated flight technology so long as an operator who was in visual contact could intervene and was not responsible for more than one drone at a time. The rule also prohibits any item being dropped from a drone or carrying cargo for a third party.

“We have tried to be flexible in writing these rules,” said FAA administrator Michael Huerta, in a statement. “We want to maintain today’s outstanding level of aviation safety without placing an undue regulatory burden on an emerging industry.”

Industry groups said they were encouraged by some aspects of the proposed new rule changes, including scrapping previous requirements for a full pilot’s license, medical examination and air-worthiness certificate for smaller drones.

But experts believe recent advances in technology, such as automated collision avoidance software together with more proven camera systems, should have been taken more seriously by the FAA.

“First Person View technology is available now, and is critical to unleashing the power of automation in this space,” said the Small UAV Coalition in a statement. “Until small UAVs are able to go beyond the line of sight, we are not maximising the technology as other countries”

Separately, the White House also issued new rules on Sunday for how government agencies are allowed to use any surveillance data gathered by drones, automated or otherwise, within the US.

“As unmanned aircraft systems are integrated into the national airspace system, the federal government will take steps to ensure that the integration takes into account not only our economic competitiveness and public safety, but also the privacy, civil rights and civil liberties concerns these systems may raise,” said the White House.

Lawyers, however, warned that the White House guidelines fell short of fully protecting privacy from government drone use.



“The proposal allows the use of data gathered by domestic drones for any ‘authorised purpose’, which is not defined, leaving the door open to inappropriate drone use by federal agencies,” said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Legislative Office.



“At a minimum, the administration should require that law enforcement first obtain a judge’s approval before being allowed to use this invasive technology and limit drone use to specific purposes.”