Having made a successful landing in Italy at the end of last year, e-commerce giant Amazon will be pressing ahead with a its plans to launch a package delivery operation in the UK soon.

At which point we have to put in the disclaimer that making big launches and grandiose plans has never been the problem for Amazon’s Prime Air delivery by drone programme.

It is keeping those plans afloat that has been the company’s main sore point and a source of frustration and derision.

But they are like the Murdochs in Daredevil, are the Amazon. No matter how many times their drones blow up out of the sky or crash to the ground; the company always gets up.

And here they are again the UK – a few years after they were forced to close their UK Prime Air office – with new plans to for delivery flights in Darlington.

Their choice of location is strategic, since Amazon has a fulfilment centre in the town.

“Having already built safe and reliable drone delivery services elsewhere in the world in close partnership with regulators and the communities we serve (ha ha), we are now working to do the same in the UK — and Prime Air is taking steps to start planning for initial flights from our fulfilment centre in Darlington,” the company announced.

“While there is still much work to do, this is an exciting step forward for Prime Air. We will be lodging a planning application with the local authority to seek permission to build our flight operations facilities at the site, as well as applying for authorisation from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to fly drones in the airspace.

“Once those agreements are in place, we will begin hiring team members to launch drone delivery.”

Eligible customers would be able to choose drone delivery as an option alongside same-day delivery, as explained Amazon spokesperson Av Zammit, quoted in The Financial Times.

Zammit added that at launch, delivery time could take up to two hours, though the company hopes to get this down to under 30 minutes.

“It’s all about speed”, he said.

Amazon says it wants to be delivering 500 million packages a year worldwide by drone by the end of 2029 — which constitutes a tenth of the total number of packages it delivered by same- or next- day delivery last year.

Grandiose plans, like we said.

The company said something like the same in 2013, when commercial delivery by drone seemed like a pie in the sky.

But Graham Brown, head of UK drone trade association ARPAS-UK, says drone technology is advancing at such a rate that drones will soon be able to operate in all weather conditions, while battery life will improve and their weight is reduced. He believes that drones are on a similar trajectory to old mobile phones.

Despite logistical barriers, the successful implementation of drone deliveries at scale is a matter of “when, not if,” Born says.

Initially, products delivered by Amazon’s MK30 drones will have to be smaller than a shoebox, and lighter than 2.3kg. But Zammit says that covers almost all of the items that customers want quickly, including electronics, medication and cooking ingredients.

Amazon is also conducting trials in the US, although it paused them earlier this year so that it could make improvements to its fleet.

This time, Prime Air is planning to put the MK30 into a hover around 4m above the ground and check for obstacles with sensors before dropping the parcel, which will be protected by special “trampoline” packaging. This method, the company says, is more efficient than previous trials — where customers had to put out a steel sheet with a QR code to act as a drop point.

But it does not work for blocks of flats, Zammit acknowledges, adding that Amazon is working on a solution.

Alex Brown, head of Skyports’ drone services, expects Amazon’s first UK drone deliveries to happen before the end of the year, at least on a temporary basis.

Drone delivery services such as Prime Air have the potential to revolutionise some supply chains, particularly in remote areas or for the delivery of urgent medical supplies, and improve their sustainability, says Ellis Shelton, senior policy adviser at Logistics UK, by moving goods “in the most productive, strategic and green way”.

At the launch of its plans to introduce drone delivery for its operations in Europe in 2023, Amazon said it was working hard to ensure that the plans would stick this time.

We have refined the technology and are now building the right infrastructure to ensure the service provides the ultimate convenience for our customers,” the company said.

We’ve also taken great care to ensure that our drones’ design philosophy and demonstrated levels of safety are setting a higher bar for safety across the commercial drone delivery industry, working closely with regulators to design to the highest standard set within those regulations.”