Dear Jeff, Prime Air drone delivery needs approach charts

Glad that your teams are pumping out those drone delivery patents left right and centre. It will certainly be easier to stomp on any great ideas should anybody come out with anything close to what the dream factory bangs out.

I was also very pleased to see that you picked up on my print your own landing pad idea. Of course, I am still awaiting my first delivery, will it be you or Astro that makes it ;-)

Now here is what I wanted to share, I am moving house and the aerial approach to my new place is not as clear as here.

So I have prepared a chart for you. A way for your drones to make the approach and descent whilst not hitting the hill or flying over the main road at low level. I started thinking about this last October and have just remembered to write to you. It’s been in the background of Drone Stuff This Week on my wall since last October. 

Now you may or may not know that here there are very few approach plates for rural African runways. Making your own charts or “Jungle Jepps”as they are called is commonplace.

There is even an OpenSource Jungle Jepp desktop app on Github for creating them!

https://github.com/joeljeske/Jungle-Jepps

I suspect before deliveries really take off (see what I did there) you are going to have to reassure regulators with consistent deliveries into known areas with established published approach and departure routes. Of course what happens in the event of an emergency and an area to go off and crash into if need be is also important.

Once those areas are charted and used consistently then I am sure aviation authorities will start to relax.

I expect a whole host of companies will stand up to create this sort of Drone Approach Chart or DAC For a small financial consideration of course.

I have some more ideas, but more of that later.

All the best to MacKenzie and the children.