Today, an Amazon Prime Air MK30 drone arrived unannounced in a residential garden in Darlington, County Durham, England.
I don’t want to say we told you so, but we told you so. Its been a long running topic of discussion on our Tuesday chats. (21:00 GMT Drone and Sundry channel). By chance two weeks ago we had a very candid chat with Bobby Healy of Manna Air Delivery, I will put his full video bit down below. But in short:-
Bobby told us that his Manna has completed over 400,000 deliveries in challenging weather conditions in Ireland, boasting a safety record that surpasses ground transport methods like e-bikes and motorbikes. Because they are held to stricter standards than ground vehicles, the drones operate using conservative risk calculations to maintain exceptional safety levels. The aircraft are designed with high redundancy, utilizing three separate flight control Cubepilot Cubes that communicate through a hardware voting system. If a critical issue occurs, the drones are programmed to automatically deploy a parachute. He obviously said lots more than that and was as he always is, very generous with his time. Bobby tells us how it is honestly, warts and all.
Contrast that with an Amazon representative who marched into a tent at Farnborough Airshow, 2010 I think it was, said they would run UK lower airspace this is what it will look like, no questions please and was off. The tent full of CAA and NATS representatives and me was left somewhat stunned. I doubt if any of them still work in those places. The reason I say that is because the CAA seems to have bent the knee to Amazon and has let them in and closed airspace with very little friction. The people that have signed them off can’t have been in that tent.
It’s not Amazons first off,
May 2021 — Pendleton, Oregon (Test Range)
Aircraft: MK27 prototype
Incident: Propeller Failure
Details: During experimental testing at Amazon’s rural testing range, an 89-pound prototype drone suffered a propeller failure and plummeted to the ground in an uncontrolled state.
June 2021 — Pendleton, Oregon (Test Range)
Aircraft: MK27 prototype
Incident: Motor Failure and 20-Acre Brush Fire
Details: While flying at an altitude of 160 feet, the drone experienced motor failure and went into a tailspin. Upon impact, the onboard lithium-ion battery ruptured and burst into flames, sparking a fire that consumed roughly 20 acres of wheat field before local firefighters extinguished it.
July 2021 — Pendleton, Oregon (Test Range)
Aircraft: MK27 prototype
Incident: In-Flight Motor Drop
Details: A test drone dropped 120 feet out of the sky due to hardware failure. FAA documentation later revealed that at least eight test drones crashed in a 12-month period between 2021 and 2022 as Amazon pushed its systems to operational limits.
December 16, 2024 — Oregon Test Facility
Aircraft: MK30 delivery drones
Incident: Dual Mid-Air Power Cut (LiDAR Sensor Glitch)
Details: At an altitude of 217 feet, an MK30 drone completed a mock package drop, ascended, and then abruptly cut power to its six propellers mid-air, crashing into the ground. Just four minutes later, a second MK30 flying at 183 feet over a taxiway suffered the exact same failure. NTSB investigations revealed that a software update made onboard LiDAR altitude sensors vulnerable to light rain. The sensors misread the altitude data, leading the drone’s software to mistakenly believe it had touched down, which triggered an immediate motor shutdown. Amazon temporarily paused testing operations until the FAA approved a software patch in March 2025.
October 1, 2025 — Tolleson, Arizona
Aircraft: MK30 delivery drones
Incident: Dual Construction Crane Collision and Battery Fire
Details: Two MK30 delivery drones struck the boom of the same active construction crane within minutes of each other. The collisions smashed both aircraft, causing a battery to eject and catch fire on impact. One bystander was evaluated by emergency personnel for smoke inhalation, and the event prompted joint investigations by the NTSB and FAA.
November 2025 — Waco, Texas
Aircraft: MK30 delivery drone
Incident: Cable Strike
Details: Just 13 days after launching commercial delivery service in the area, an MK30 drone severed an overhead residential internet cable during its post-delivery vertical ascent.
February 4, 2026 — Richardson, Texas (Dallas Suburb)
Aircraft: MK30 delivery drone
Incident: Apartment Building Collision
Details: While en route to a delivery, an MK30 drone collided with the side of an apartment building on Routh Creek Parkway. The aircraft shattered and fell onto a public sidewalk below, where it began sparking and emitting heavy smoke with its propellers still spinning. Firefighters arrived on the scene to ensure the battery didn’t ignite a structural fire, and Amazon crews safely retrieved the wreckage. No injuries were reported.
Might have been more and AI can’t find them for me. But this incident to me is not unlike the 2019 Alauda Airspeeder crash, at Goodwood, where the 95kg racing drone lost control shot up through the airways system and then gravity won.
It lead to an AAIB investigation that criticized the CAA’s handling of operator safety cases. More worrying at the time on one of our Tuesday chats I found that I had all the flight equipment they used on my desk and in a couple of draws. Any inspector truly from the industry would have known what they were looking at when they inspected that airframe.
This is surely how the CAA, AAIB and Amazon will handle this incident.
That chat with Bobby Healy. We are very lucky to get so much time with him.
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