Amazon plans for drone deliveries [Video]

SEATTLE, Washington—Online retailer Amazon thinks it has the game-changing solution to the challenge of quick-turn-around (30 minutes or less), urban deliveries of small items: unmanned aerial drones.

No, seriously.

According to the company, drones are no joke. In an FAQ posted on a webpage devoted to Amazon Prime Air (which is apparently the name of this initiative), the retailer addressed skeptics and those who were double-checking their calendars to ensure April Fool’s Day hadn’t been switched with US Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday. It wrote:

Q: Is this science fiction or is this real?

A: It looks like science fiction, but it’s real. From a technology point of view, we’ll be ready to enter commercial operations as soon as the necessary regulations are in place. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is actively working on rules for unmanned aerial vehicles.

According to the website, Amazon is ready to roll out its fleet as soon as it gets the okay from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which it expect will happen in 2015, when the FAA likely to have its rules and regulations in place governing the use of unmanned aerial vehicles.

Video produced by the Amazon show a drone dropping off a delivery on a wide, flat, sidewalk in front of a house. It didn’t demonstrate where the drone would deposit an item destined for the resident of a highrise apartment or condo–especially one located on a busy main street with no real private space in front of the entrance, but the company’s logisticians are likely working on that problem.