Australian company Flirtey just made the first legal long-distance delivery by drone in the US. In rural Virginia last Friday, the company’s drones brought a payload of medicine to a remote pop-up health clinic. The clinic, which serves more than 3,000 patients on a single weekend every year, has difficulty supplying all the medications its patients require. The nearest pharmacies are 35-miles away on the map and take 90 minutes to reach by car. The trip can be completed significantly faster by air. NASA flew the medicine to a local airport using their own unmanned aerial vehicle. From there, Flirtey's drone completed the last mile of the delivery, making three separate trips to carry ten pounds of cargo.Re/code spoke with the CEO of Flirtey, Matthew Sweeny, who emphasized that the drone delivery didn't require the airports to be closed to regular traffic. “The reason that’s important,” he said, “is because it shows drones can operate safely around other aircraft.” There are still many obstacles to overcome before drone delivery becomes truly viable. For one, Wall Street Journal notes, there aren't many commercial drones that could fly the 35-mile trip without their batteries dying. When also considering the difficulty caused by the small payload that these drones can handle, it becomes clear that the technology is not yet sufficiently advanced to perform reliable deliveries. Flirtey received a special approval to perform this delivery as part of a demonstration, but the WSJ also reminds us that there are a number of FAA rules that effectively ban such activities. The agency’s proposed UAV rules, which restrict operation to line-of-sight distance and do not allow flight over people or in cities, would severely hamstring a company’s ability to deliver cargo by drone. Regardless, Flirtey CEO Sweeny calls the delivery a “Kitty Hawk moment,” referring to the historic first airplane flight achieved by the Wright Brothers.Amazon Is Still Preparing to DeliverAt the end of 2013 Amazon announced Prime Air, a drone delivery system “designed to safely get packages into consumers’ hands in 30 minutes or less.” The company has been tussling with the FAA ever since--about their 333 exemptions for testing, about line-of-sight requirements, and more. As unlikely as it seems that Prime Air will pan out, Forbes has reported that Amazon is dead serious about the drone delivery service. According to the magazine, Amazon is scanning backyards in Seattle in order to lay the groundwork for an eventual launch. Earlier in the month Andru Edwards, a resident of Seattle and an “Amazon video personality,” tweeted that “Amazon is coming to my house to scan my backyard for Prime Air drone delivery next week!” Forbes points out that FAA Deputy Administrator Michael Whitaker has testified before congress that formal regulations for commercial UAVs should be ready within 12 months. Amazon, for its part, “has said it's determined to be ready as soon as those regulations are approved.” Given the obstacles highlighted by the Flirtey drone delivery, it’s not clear that the rules proposed by congress would allow Amazon’s delivery service to operate. Amazon, however, continues to prepare.