Amazon’s Prime Air drone delivery business has withdrawn from arguably the country’s largest and most influential drone advocacy group over a “fundamental and irreconcilable disagreement” on safety, it wrote in a letter viewed by FLYING.
First reported by Reuters, the letter marks Prime Air’s formal departure from the Commercial Drone Alliance (CDA) due to clashing perspectives on the FAA’s consequential Part 108 proposal, which contains provisions for beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) operations.
The proposal generated thousands of comments, many criticizing the FAA for going too far—and some for not going far enough. The CDA largely falls in the latter bucket.
“After extensive dialogue…it is clear that CDA’s positions on the most consequential safety questions facing the commercial drone industry are incompatible with Prime Air’s core safety tenets,” reads the letter from Matt McCardle, Prime Air’s director of global regulatory, infrastructure, and expansion, who resigned from the CDA board.
In a statement Saturday, the CDA assured that it is “fully committed to the safety of the National Airspace System [NAS] and integrating drones safely and securely.”
“The drone industry must meet a high bar for safety, and our members do,” it wrote.
Amazon’s exodus creates a divide between Prime Air and competitors Zipline, Dexa, and Alphabet’s Wing, all CDA members.
The organization also represents military and public safety uncrewed aircraft system (UAS) developers such as Skydio, Brinc Drones, and Merlin Labs, as well as several state utility providers and mobility projects like the Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research Alliance (NUAIR).
Amazon vs. Drone Industry
Prime Air wrote that the safe integration of drones is the company’s “highest priority” and argued the CDA is operating with a “narrower set of commercial priorities.”
The disagreement centers on a provision that would require drones to equip technology that helps them detect and avoid (DAA) crewed aircraft.
Part 108 would expand BVLOS operations, meaning more flights without human eyes directly on the drone. To prevent collisions, the FAA proposed that Part 108 UAS have DAA capabilities that extend to noncooperative aircraft—those not broadcasting location, speed, and other data using ADS-B Out or some other form of electronic conspicuity (EC)—when flying in Class B and C airspace or over densely populated areas.
The agency alternatively considered an ADS-B Out mandate for all crewed aircraft flying below 500 feet. But it determined that cost and reliability concerns made it impractical.
In February, the House rejected a bill that would have mandated universal ADS-B adoption in the wake of the fatal 2025 collision over the Potomac River between a commercial passenger jet and U.S. Army helicopter, which was not broadcasting its location at the time of impact. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sharply criticized the move, which it said ignored its recommendations.
The CDA similarly supports an ADS-B requirement for crewed operations below 500 feet, making noncooperative DAA systems moot. Prime Air views that as a partial solution.
“The risk of a drone collision with a crewed aircraft is not theoretical,” McCardle wrote. “It is a foreseeable consequence of relying on a single layer of electronic detection in an airspace system that has always demanded redundancy.”
Prime Air agreed with the FAA that Part 108 must contain “requirements that mandate drone technologies capable of detecting non-cooperative crewed aircraft.”
It cited two incidents during which its DAA system avoided collisions with crewed aircraft that were not broadcasting their position, despite being required to in one of the cases. Without that intervention, the company said, there could have been “catastrophic safety consequences, including the loss of life.”
The CDA last year made its position clear in comments on the FAA’s proposal, which it said Saturday represent the “consensus position of the commercial drone community.”
The group “strongly recommends” removing the noncooperative DAA requirement for a few reasons. One is cost—CDA members estimated that the installation of radar systems to meet the provision could cost them anywhere from $1,000 to $30,000 per square mile of coverage. It argued that equipping crewed aircraft with ADS-B or other EC systems would be cheaper.
The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) strongly disagreed. It even went a step further, arguing that drones should have ADS-B In capabilities.
“To require GA aircraft to equip with conspicuity technology, which may or may not be reliable enough to serve as a stand-alone deconfliction mechanism, simply because DAA capabilities for drones are too expensive, too heavy, or too power-intensive, is stunningly inequitable and, again, unsafe,” AOPA wrote.
AOPA’s other contention was that ADS-B systems are unreliable at low altitude. That’s supported by the Transportation Department, which per a recent Government Accountability Office report warned in December that the technology “was not designed to accommodate the sheer number of drones entering the airspace, leading to potential signal issues.”
Amazon’s own DAA is not perfect. In February, one of its drones crashed into an apartment building in Texas, months after another clipped an internet cable. AOPA has specifically used Prime Air’s DAA as evidence of the technology’s immaturity, citing a 2025 incident in which two drones struck the same crane boom in Arizona.
“The fact that two drones crashed within minutes of each other, into the same obstacle, would seem to indicate that a systemic problem exists that must be examined and addressed,” the group wrote in its comment.
The CDA told a different story. In its statement Saturday, the group said its members “have conducted millions of safe UAS operations to date” using current systems, arguing that a prescriptive requirement for noncooperative DAA is simply not necessary.
Amazon accused it of cutting corners.
“Amazon Prime Air’s operational experience demonstrates the opposite: noncooperative detect and avoid technologies are not only achievable, they are the pathway to the high levels of safety that the NAS demands and that the public deserves,” the company wrote.
