S3 · 12/16
2024 ·
Amazon · Pendleton, OR, USA
| Company | Amazon |
| Category | warehouse automation |
| Type | malfunction |
| Date | 12/16 2024 |
| Time of day | not documented |
| Location | Pendleton, OR, USA |
| Severity | S3 (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault) |
| Scale | MK30 delivery drone fleet |
| Confidence | high |
| Verification | Yes - adversarially checked against the cited source |
| Source | New York Post / Bloomberg |
Two Amazon Prime Air MK30 delivery drones crashed during test flights in light rain at Amazon's drone test facility, four minutes apart, after faulty lidar readings (made more rain-sensitive by a software update, with no backup 'squat switch' landing sensor as on the prior MK27 model) caused the drones to falsely believe they had landed, shutting off propellers mid-air at 217 ft and 183 ft. Amazon paused Prime Air commercial deliveries in College Station, TX and Phoenix, AZ to fix the software.