After receiving approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, Amazon.com Inc. will start a same-day Prime Air drone delivery service for customers in the West Valley Phoenix Metro Area of Arizona.

As of today, those people can make an order and expect to wait up to an hour for the drone to arrive with their goods from Amazon’s takeoff site in Tolleson. Amazon says in total there are about 50,000 items available, including household supplies, beauty products, health supplies and tech items.

Customers can only order items that collectively weigh no more than five pounds. They type in their address and, as long as the weather is favorable to flying and it’s not nighttime, the drone is good to go. Customers will be informed within the app if they live in the radius of possible delivery.

Despite billions of dollars in investment, Amazon’s drone delivery business has been slow to take off. Last year, the company kicked off such a service in Texas where, like in Arizona, it will use a system known as Beyond Visual Line of Sight, or BLVOS. These are human-operated drones where the human cannot see the flight path but directs the drone through its sensors. Amazon first needed to prove to the FAA that this could be done without hitting other objects in the sky.

“This is an historic, first-of-its-kind approval for a new drone system and a new operating location following a rigorous FAA evaluation of the safety of our systems and processes,” Amazon said in a blog post.

Just recently, Amazon shut down its drone delivery services in Lockeford, California. The company has faced regulatory battles in the drone space, while there have been plenty of challenges regarding weather conditions, the noise level of the drones, and competition from other firms operating delivery drones. Nonetheless, with this new approval, there’s still hope for the delivery drone yet.

“This kind of delivery is the future,” Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego said earlier this year. “The shift toward zero-emission package delivery will help us reduce local pollution and further cement our city as a hotbed for the innovative technology of tomorrow.”

Photo: Amazon