It is August 20 today and online retail behemoth Amazon has set itself a target of introducing its Prime Air delivery drone service to 500 cities and towns in the United States by the end of 2026 — a sixfold increase from its current footprint.
Yes, the company that has been trying to launch a drone logistics service since 2013, the company that has been in the headlines for failed launches and drones falling out of the sky and crashing into neighbourhoods; that company — wants us to believe that it will be bringing ultrafast drone delivery to communities with tens of millions of customers across the country within the coming four months.
Currently Amazon’s Prime Air service offers drone delivery from eleven locations sites across ten US metro areas: Phoenix, Arizona; Tampa, Florida; Kansas City, Kansas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Detroit, Michigan; Omaha, Nebraska; Houston, Texas; Dallas, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; and Waco, Texas.
We may not be very goof at Mathematics, but eleven metro locations is way removed from 500.
But Amazon insists they will get there, starting with Chicago, Illinois; Syracuse, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Atlanta, Georgia; and Boise, Idaho metro areas.
More communities will be served come later this year, the company promised.
“Customers already turn to Amazon for fast Same- and Next-Day Delivery, and Prime Air provides them an even speedier option when they need it, with deliveries in as fast as 30 minutes,” said David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air.
“We've already delivered hundreds of thousands of packages to customers by drone this year, and by the end of 2026 we plan to reach customers in nearly 500 cities and towns. We're pairing the convenience of ultrafast drone delivery with the low prices and selection customers love about Amazon.”
The company statement added that Prime Air offered the widest selection of items by drone, including millions of groceries, electronics, cosmetics, medications, and household products at everyday low prices, delivered in as fast as 30 minutes.
The items have to weigh a maximum of five pounds, and they will be fitted in a box shoe-like container, which will be loaded onto the drone – currently the MK 30 prototype – to be airlifted to the customer’s home.
Amazon also claims its Prime Air drone delivery sites have the highest average delivery volumes in the US, with thousands of deliveries made daily.
Prime Air does hold the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Part 135 certification, the aviation authority’s green light for companies to operate commercial aircraft, which is the highest level of FAA oversight for drone delivery operations.
That has not stopped the drones from crashing though, with the most recent incident being reported in Darlington in the UK just last month. The other accidents happened in Texas and Arizona.
This is a far cry from Amazon’s competitors in the US, Zipline and Wing, who have successfully completed millions of light missions globally, delivering groceries and medical supplies, without endangering humans on the ground. To be fair, Wing does have a few isolated incidents of its own, but none of them have been as dramatic and consequential as Amazon’s.
But the company is proud though, and it has made it clear it will never outsource drones for its Prime Air service. So we sit and hope.
“Multiple independent systems keep our highly autonomous drones operating safely and predictably throughout flight, even in unexpected situations,” Amazon says.
“Prime Air’s industry-leading Detect-and-Avoid system continuously monitors the airspace and environment around the drone. It’s similar to a trained pilot who scans the surrounding airspace, and it allows the drones to independently see and make real-time decisions while in flight.”