BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – Amazon is bringing its Prime Air drone delivery service to Baton Rouge this summer.

Once it launches, the service will give customers a way to get small items delivered in as little as one to two hours.

Prime Air operations are set to begin mid-summer in Baton Rouge. The company says it will use autonomous drones that can fly more than 200 feet high and reach speeds of over 70 miles per hour.

How the service works

“This is an option that we’ve provided that customers have wanted that provides an ultra-fast, sub-two-hour, sub-one-hour, depending on the area, that we can deliver over 60,000 products that Amazon has to offer in our warehouses,” said Jeff Cleland, Amazon’s principal of Prime Air drone delivery.

Amazon says customers will use the service the same way they already shop online. Customers order eligible items about the size of a shoebox, weighing up to five pounds. They then select Amazon’s Baton Rouge drone delivery location and track the delivery online or in the app.

Amazon says between 12 and 20 drones will be housed in a new facility near the Cortana warehouse.

Limited service area

Drone delivery will depend on where customers live. Only customers within a 7.5-mile radius of the drone facility will be eligible for drone delivery.

“This is a community that has all of the factors that we would need to do delivery. I mean, first of all, we needed an operational footprint, which we have. We need great weather. This is great weather, but also just an innovative town; a town that wants innovation, that wants like new things, cool things,” Cleland said.

J. Ofori Agboka, an LSU alum and Amazon vice president of PXT for global operations, said the service will bring innovation and technology to create jobs and serve customers.

“When it comes to Baton Rouge, it’s a large portion of what can be delivered out of that building, we can bring to a customer ultra-fast,” Cleland said.

Cleland said the service could help families get essentials quickly.

“I have three young kids, and if one of my kids is sick, I don’t want to have to put all three of them in the car and drive somewhere to get children’s Motrin or something like that. But if you can get this delivered to the house in under two hours, it really then becomes, like, a necessity for a family,” he said.

Andrew Fitzgerald, senior vice president of strategy and research at the Greater Baton Rouge Economic Partnership, said the service could reduce traffic.

“If this lets you get a good you need without having to leave your house and run an errand, and if it possibly keeps cars and trucks off the road, that’s a huge plus for the region,” Fitzgerald said.

The drones are authorized to fly by the FAA. Amazon says the flight paths are safe. If the airspace becomes busy, the drones can use their sensors and cameras to avoid other aircraft in real time and get back to their path to safely deliver to the customer.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed that Prime Air “operates out of eight Amazon facilities delivering to the following communities: San Antonio, Waco, Dallas, Phoenix, Detroit, Tampa and Kansas City, KS.“

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