The United States Federal Aviation Administration halted a beer delivery via drone to ice fisherman in Minnesota in small isolated houses as guidelines forbid the object's public use Forbes reported Friday.
Lakemaid Beer, headquartered in Minnesota envisioned transporting the beer to the fisherman until being stopped.
"My intent was to try a larger drone that could fly unmanned, based on just the coordinates" of an ice shack," Jack Supple, managing partner, and president at Lakemaid told Forbes. "(And the Twin Pines resort) has fish houses out in the bay probably half a mile. So a little longer stretch than we first tested," Supple told Forbes.
"It's the perfect proving ground for drone delivery," Supple said in a press release. "Our initial tests on several mid-size lakes have been very successful. We're looking forward to testing the range of our drones on larger lakes," Supple said in the statement.
A petition listed on WhiteHouse.gov fell 30 signees from the 100,000 votes necessary to get a reply from the White House Forbes reported.
"This innovative product-to-market technique allowed a small business to grow its brand and take advantage of a government-supported initiative to embrace UAV technology," the summary on the petition reads. "The FAA has no standing to restrict the delivery of products by small businesses and choke economic growth." The statement said
Drones have become more common especially at Amazon.com who has been trying out testing drones to send packages to consumers.
The online retailer anticipates being able to deliver orders in half an hour using the device NBC News reported.
"Amazon faces a lot of obstacles," Supple said in the statement. "Dense urban locations present a host of problems to drone delivery. But our tests are on vast, wide-open frozen lakes free of trees and power lines. Our drone can fly as the crow flies, straight to our target, based on GPS coordinates provided by an ice angler. Fish houses are very uniform in height, so we can fly lower than FAA limits, too," Supple said in the statement.
