An Amazon MK30 delivery drone spent Friday afternoon sitting in the grass beside Florida Boulevard in Baton Rouge, upright on its landing gear with all six propellers intact, while pickup trucks rolled past a few yards away. A passerby filmed it and posted the video to Facebook with the caption “Amazon what’s up??? Who in charge of flying the drones.” By Saturday the clip had 129 reactions, 45 comments and 72 shares.
The aircraft carries the registration N486BG on its fuselage. Nothing in the footage suggests a crash: the wings are level, the props are whole and the airframe shows no visible damage. It looks like a drone that decided to stop flying, which is what Amazon’s own contingency procedure is designed to produce.
Amazon has not said what triggered the landing. DroneXL asked the company for comment and will update this article with its response. The request went out a week after Amazon let DroneXL’s deadline on eight written MK30 safety questions pass without an answer…