Watch: Drone delivers Amazon's first packages in the UK

Amazon Prime Air, the company's drone delivery programme, arrived in the United Kingdom with the first documented commercial delivery on British soil. The service, operating in selected residential areas, allows packages weighing less than 2.5 kilograms to arrive at homes in less than an hour from the nearest warehouse. The drones used in the programme fly autonomously, using computer vision and geolocation systems to identify the delivery point and land in gardens or open spaces.

The road to commercial operation in the UK was long. Amazon Prime Air began trials in the United States in 2013 and the first real delivery in Cambridge, UK, occurred in 2016 under controlled conditions. Regulation was the main obstacle: the UK Civil Aviation Authority and the FAA in the United States took years to develop regulatory frameworks that would allow autonomous flights in urban airspace with the required level of safety. The areas where the service operates remain geographically limited and require specific weather conditions.

The competitive logic behind deliveries in under an hour is clear: Amazon competes directly with physical stores for products of immediate need. An over-the-counter medicine, a phone charger, an ingredient missing for dinner: these are the use cases where delivery speed can change the buying decision between online shopping and going to a store. The programme remains small in absolute scale, but its gradual expansion pressures the entire last-mile logistics industry to accelerate its own investments in automation.