Amazon’s drone delivery unit loses key FAA interlocutor: report

Efforts by Amazon to fulfill founder Jeff Bezo’s decade old vision of swiftly dispatching customer orders with a fleet of speedy, efficient delivery drones is facing yet another unexpected challenge with the news that the primary interlocutor in its contacts with the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA), Sean Cassidy, has left the company.

Word of Cassidy’s departure as director of safety, flight operations, and regulatory affairs with Amazon’s Prime Air was reported Monday afternoon by CNBC. Citing an internal memo sent to fellow (and almost immediately former) colleagues, Cassidy revealed plans to leave the company at the end of the day, after having spent eight years of spearheading work to get its drone delivery activities up to cruising speed.

Although Prime Air has made progress during Cassidy’s tenure, its drone deliveries still fall well short of both company and outside observer expectations. 

Meantime, the massive marketplace’s UAV program has also become a favored target of media and pundit attention – and, perhaps due to the rather divisive personality of Bezos himself, recurring mockery – that tends to focus on Amazon’s aerial setbacks while giving shorter shrift to its relative successes.

A recent example of such breakthroughs came in October. At that time, Amazon secured a loosening of the conditions the FAA placed with its earlier authorization of Prime Air’s beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) drone deliveries in its primary US pilot locations. 

In his role as operational and security expert, airline pilot and industry veteran Cassidy had been described as vital in negotiating that liberalization, and the previous granting of Prime Air’s Part 135 certificate in September.

Based on those authorizations, Amazon added delivery of prescriptions to its drone services in College Station, TX, where it launched operations in 2022, in tandem with Lockeford, CA. 

It also announced its intention to begin UAV activities for customers in Italy and the UK, and seemed to have finally begun putting the long series of mishaps, craft crashes, BVLOS flights ham-strung by observer rules, and grim reports of disorganization and staff cuts behind it.

That turning of the corner may still wind up being the case if Amazon can find an equally effective replacement to fill Cassidy’s post, and keep building moment – and positive press response – that other drone delivery companies like Wing, DroneUp, Flytrex, Zipline, and others receive in their scaling activities. 

At the moment, however, word of Cassidy’s departure risks being interpreted as another unwanted, negative headline in a long and heavy scrapbook Prime Air would like to close for good.