FAA will let Amazon fly drones to customers, but not over cities yet

Amazon Prime Air has won the FAA's permission to start delivering small items to customers by drone.

But that doesn’t mean Seattle area residents will see drones above their rooftops anytime soon.

For Amazon, drones are the key to its goal of delivering some items in 30 minutes or less.

But the FAA approval has a lot of conditions.

To start, the the drones can’t fly over moving cars or buildings and they can’t land within 100 feet of a living person.

That pretty much means – they can’t deliver in cities.

Still, convincing the FAA to let them start delivering to the general public, even in limited areas, was a big milestone.

The company had to demonstrate its on-the-ground pilots could safely operate the drone under normal, abnormal and emergency conditions.

Amazon inspired the race to drone delivery back in 2013.

But since then, competitors like the United Parcel Service and Google’s parent company Alphabet have beaten Amazon to FAA approval.