There was some national pride in the choice to include Italy in the Amazon Prime Air pilot project, that is delivery with drones of Amazon packages, the only country in the European Union: but now the e-commerce giant has suspended the project with an official communication sent to ENAC.
The Seattle company’s comment is sparse and a bit vague “Following a strategic reviewwe have decided to discontinue our commercial drone delivery plans in Italy. Despite the positive engagement and progress made with the Italian aerospace authorities, the broader context in which we operate in Italy does not, at the moment, offer the necessary conditions for our long-term objectives for this service. Our drone delivery projects in the United States and the United Kingdom they continue positively, with test flights and commercial deliveries proving effective and well received by customers.”
The drone delivery project
The idea was suggestive even if it left some doubts about the real sustainability of the project: delivery with drones, directly to the users’ homes, in less than 30 minutes from ordering. To achieve this goal, Amazon has set up a special division called Prime Air with the ambition of wanting to achieve 500 million deliveries with its own fleet of drones by the end of the decade.
Experimentation in Italy is not never really took offthe first parcels delivered in our country with this method should have reached selected customers between the end of last year and the beginning of this year and then become fully operational in 2026, but this was not the case.
The real reasons for the stop
The “strategic review” seems to be related to the recent problems that Amazon has had with the Italian tax authorities which led to a recent agreement which provides for the payment of 511 million euros by the company founded by Jeff Bezos to resolve a dispute linked to alleged irregularities in the payment of VAT by some marketplace sellers.
The closure, perhaps definitive, of the project in Italy with the operational base of San Salvo in Abruzzoleaves a bad taste in the mouth about the possibility of seeing our country at the forefront of this type of operation. Delivery with Amazon drones, although not very sustainable from both an economic and technological point of view, it represented opportunity to test a whole series of procedures and regulations that would offer a competitive advantage over developments in this sector.
Enac itself (National Civil Aviation Authority), which had offered full support to the collaboration with Amazon, said it was “surprised” by this decision. However, it must be admitted that the Prime Air project which involves a fleet of drones made directly by the Seattle company is having a much more difficult path than imagined with quite a few delays and problems still unresolved from a technological, safety and legal point of view.
The closure of Prime Air Italia however, it has no impact for consumers in our country who will continue to receive their parcels with the traditional methods already widely consolidated and tested.
