Amazon

Logistics · Drone Delivery · Retail

Expansion

Amazon expands Prime Air drone delivery sixfold, reaching nearly 500 cities

Each drone site's 175-square-mile radius sweeps in dozens of towns, turning eleven physical bases into hundreds of listed cities.

• Amazon announced Wednesday it will expand Prime Air drone delivery from 11 sites to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of 2026, a roughly sixfold increase, with new metro launches in Chicago, Atlanta, Cleveland, Syracuse and Boise.
• Prime Air's autonomous MK30 drones carry packages up to 5 pounds, covering more than 60% of Amazon's most frequently purchased items, with deliveries arriving in as fast as 30 minutes.
• Each Prime Air site covers about 175 square miles, and Amazon's 'nearly 500' tally counts every municipality inside that radius — today's 11 sites already equal roughly 80 towns on that basis.
• Amazon has delivered hundreds of thousands of packages by drone so far in 2026, with its busiest sites handling thousands daily; Prime Air VP David Carbon projected 1 million deliveries this year at a March all-hands.
• The push follows a 2024 FAA approval for long-range drone flights and comes despite past safety incidents, including two drones colliding with a crane boom in Tolleson, Arizona, in October 2025.
• Forrester retail analyst Sucharita Kodali called the program 'still an experiment... in test and learn mode,' noting Amazon hasn't shown repeat customer demand or worked out the delivery economics.
• The expansion sharpens Amazon's last-mile speed race with Walmart and tests whether drone delivery can move from a novelty pilot to a genuine logistics channel at national scale.