Amazon aims for delivery drones to reach 500 US neighborhoods by end of 2026

Even DoorDash is looking to build its own in-house delivery drone program. In July, the delivery service company announced it had received its FAA Part 135 certification to launch what it describes as DoorDash Air—though it is still in the early phases of designing its delivery drone and planning out operations. The accelerating US expansion of drone delivery services promises speedy deliveries to customers within an hour, and sometimes within minutes in the fastest cases. Such autonomous drones typically run on battery-electric power and potentially offer lower-emission, lower-cost operations without putting more vehicles on the road for last-mile deliveries. However, delivery drones are still limited in how much they can carry. For example, Amazon describes its drones as being capable of handling nearly all items weighing five pounds or less that can fit within a large shoebox. Strong winds, heavy rain or snow, and extreme cold can also prevent drones from operating. There have also been community concerns about safety, privacy and especially noise pollution in neighborhoods serviced by drones. None of those issues are likely to go away as US companies ramp up delivery drone services nationwide with the regulatory approval of the US Federal Aviation Administration. Zipline appears to have the cleanest safety record despite its autonomous drones having collectively flown over 100 million miles. The company includes backup parachutes for its drones, which have apparently proven handy on a few occasions when individual drones ran into trouble while delivering Walmart orders this year. By comparison, Amazon Prime Air’s operations have led to several safety incidents that sometimes triggered investigations by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board. Two Amazon delivery drones crashed into a stationary construction crane in Tolleson, Arizona in October 2025, while another delivery drone took down an overhead Internet cable in Waco in November 2025. The federal government’s investigations into those incidents are ongoing. “We trained our algorithms; we felt pretty good, but we found in the real world the performance just wasn’t good enough, and let me tell you, that was a humbling experience,” said David Carbon, vice president of Prime Air at Amazon, in a recording of an internal staff meeting in March that was obtained by CNBC. The most recent incident saw a vertically ascending Amazon delivery drone collide with an apartment building before falling to the ground in Richardson, Texas, in February 2026. Alphabet-owned Wing has experienced at least one notable safety incident when a food delivery drone caught fire after landing on top of overhead power lines in Brisbane, Australia, in September 2022. That forced the energy company Energex to temporarily shut down electricity service to about 2,000 people. A Wing delivery drone fulfilling Walmart orders also crashed and burned on grassy ground in Kemah, Texas, in March 2026. “Some days I hear them 5 or 6 times back and forth every 15 minutes,” commented Reddit user Puzzleheaded_Belt740 in a subreddit for Royal Oak, Michigan. “They are so LOUD, it sounds like a small helicopter hovering.” Some Reddit users described attempting to ask Amazon customer service to reroute drones around their house but without much success. Others said they had filed noise complaints with the FAA. “More often than any actual street traffic in our neighborhood. it’s actively altered the ambiance of our home,” wrote Reddit user le_artista in a subreddit for Richardson, Texas. “A business gets to loudly disturb our home, unsolicited, unwanted and with no recourse to keep them out apparently.” Residents from several neighborhoods in Richardson even held a public protest over the noise from Prime Air operations in June. Amazon responded by describing its efforts to do public outreach before launching delivery drone services and its willingness to continue engaging with local community concerns. Some people also voiced privacy concerns about having drones constantly fly or hover over their backyards. “I was in my backyard sunbathing and had like 4 drones go over my house and felt super creeped out and ended up going inside,” said Reddit user redheadjo8 in the Royal Oak subreddit. Amazon has described its delivery drones as only using onboard cameras and sensors for navigation, obstacle detection, and dropping off packages, without tracking individuals or recording people’s movements. “There is no live camera feed monitored by any person,” according to an Amazon News article about the Prime Air service expansion. “The onboard camera data is processed by the drone itself for safe navigation.” It will be worth seeing how many people voice their concerns to local city councils or the FAA in the coming months. The FAA’s latest data shows that the total number of registered noise complaints and inquiries for drones is still relatively low compared to noise complaints for helicopters or fixed-wing aircraft—but that could change as US delivery drone operations continue expanding nationwide.