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May 31 (UPI) -- Amazon has been given the green light by the Federal Aviation Administration to expand its drone operations, allowing operators of unmanned aerial vehicles to use them beyond the current line of sight rules. The Seattle-based tech giant confirmed the news in a statement Thursday, adding it will now immediately begin scaling up operations in its existing drone delivery area around College Station, Texas.
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The statement included a video showing a drone delivering a box to a rural property.
Amazon said the news allows its Prime Air service to "further expand drone deliveries and lays the foundation to safely scale operations to more locations in the U.S."
It will begin integrating the drone deliveries into its existing delivery network in the United States "later this year."
In April, Amazon announced it would begin using drone delivery in Arizona.
The FAA approval allows Amazon's commercial drone operators to employ Beyond Visual Line of Sight or BVLOS tactics when delivering packages. The term is used in aviation to denote flying a drone in a situation where a remote pilot can't see it directly with their own eyes.
Operators had previously been restricted to operations that "maintain a line of sight to their drones" before approving the technology that safely allows drones to fly beyond visual line of sight.
"To obtain this permission, we developed a BVLOS strategy, including an onboard detect-and-avoid technology. We've spent years developing, testing, and refining our onboard detect-and-avoid system to ensure our drones can detect and avoid obstacles in the air," the company said in its statement Thursday.
"We submitted crucial engineering information to the FAA, including our onboard detect-and-avoid capabilities. This included how our system was designed, how it is operated, how it is maintained, and ultimately how we validated that the system performs to specified requirements."
Amazon said it successfully completed live flight demonstrations in front of FAA inspectors, with operators flying drones in the presence of planes, helicopters and a hot air balloon to demonstrate how the drone safely navigated away from each of them."
Amazon in 2020 received FAA approval to begin testing drone deliveries of small packages weighing less than five pounds.
The company will continue using its existing MK-27 drone to reach customers in more densely populated areas. The five-pound weight limit for packages will remain in place as Amazon works to reach its goal of delivering packages to customers within 30 minutes.
