Amazon’s Drone Network Takes Aim at 500 American Communities

Prime Air is about to get much bigger. Amazon plans to expand its autonomous drone delivery service to nearly 500 cities and towns across the US by the end of 2026, taking the network to six times its current number of locations. That is a serious change in scale for a service that began in the Dallas and Phoenix areas after regulatory approval in 2024.

The expansion will begin with 11 locations: Tolleson, Arizona; Ruskin, Florida; Kansas City, Kansas; Papillion, Nebraska; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Hazel Park and Pontiac, Michigan; and Richmond, San Antonio, Richardson, and Waco, Texas. Prime Air will operate across seven states, with launches in Georgia, Ohio, Illinois, Idaho, and New York also planned.

Each service location spans about 175 square miles, including the metro areas around Kansas City, San Antonio, and Baton Rouge. Amazon says Prime Air has already delivered hundreds of thousands of packages to customers by drone this year, while estimating 1 million deliveries in 2026.

Autonomy Without a Remote Pilot Watching

Prime Air’s fleet runs on “highly autonomous” flight software designed to keep operating safely and predictably when unexpected events occur mid-flight. At the centre of that system is Detect-and-Avoid, which scans the airspace and surroundings around each drone so it can identify obstacles and make real-time flight decisions without a remote operator stepping in.

Onboard cameras and sensors handle navigation, obstacle detection, and the delivery drop. Amazon says the cameras do not track individuals or record their movements, and their footage feeds only the drone’s navigation processing rather than a monitored video feed sent back to base. No person watches a live camera stream from any aircraft.

Amazon also says its safety systems can bring a drone to a safe landing during severe weather or other unexpected events. “The safety systems extend to landing behaviour under adverse conditions,” the company states—a reassuring sentence that exists because the sky remains full of objects, weather, and gravity.

Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 certification supports the expansion. That certification allows Prime Air to add new metro areas without seeking a separate waiver for each one, giving Amazon a regulatory framework for building the network beyond its existing footprint.

Fast Delivery, With a Record That Needs Watching

Prime Air offers groceries, cosmetics, medications, and electronics, with nearly all items weighing 5 pounds or less eligible for delivery. About 60% of the most commonly ordered items qualify, and most orders arrive about 60 minutes after purchase; David Carbon, vice president of Amazon Prime Air, says deliveries can arrive “in as fast as 30 minutes.”

Prime members receive free ultrafast drone delivery on eligible orders of $50 or more. Eligible Prime orders under $50 carry a $2.99 delivery fee, while non-Prime customers pay $4.99.

Carbon says, “We’ve already delivered hundreds of thousands of packages to customers by drone this year.” The service’s next target—1 million deliveries in 2026—will test whether its autonomous systems can move from a controlled demonstration into routine logistics across hundreds of communities.

That test matters because Prime Air has experienced incidents, including drones colliding with a crane, clipping an internet cable, and crashing into a garden and an apartment building. In September 2022, a drone caught fire after landing on overhead power lines in Brisbane, Australia, causing a temporary electricity shutdown that affected about 2,000 people.

In October 2025, two drones collided with the boom of a crane in Tolleson, Arizona. Amazon’s planned expansion will put more aircraft into more airspace, so the success of Prime Air will depend on whether its Detect-and-Avoid system can handle the messy physical world as well as its software promises.

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