Amazon Prime Air delivery drones crash after backup rain/landing sensor removed from MK30 design
S3 · 16 Dec 2024 · Amazon · Pendleton, OR, USA
Record
| Company | Amazon |
| Industry | Warehouse automation |
| Type(s) | malfunction |
| Date | 16 Dec 2024 (day precision) |
| Time of day | not documented |
| Location | Pendleton, OR, USA |
| Severity | (recall, enforcement, or fleet-wide fault) |
| Scale | MK30 delivery drone fleet |
| Confidence | high |
| Verified flag | Yes - independently re-checked against the cited source |
Summary
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.
Primary source
Publisher: New York Post / Bloomberg · Retrieved: 2026-09-16
Supporting source rows (1)
| Date | Supporting source row | Publisher | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Dec 2024 | Amazon Prime Air delivery drones crash after backup rain/landing sensor removed from MK30 design | New York Post / Bloomberg | New York Post / Bloomber |
Amazon other incidents timeline
Warehouse automation context
malfunction context
Amazon industry position
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