> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Amazon says its drones will reach nearly 500 US cities and towns, each hub covering 175 square miles
- URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/amazons-nearly-500-drone-delivery-towns-are-not-nearly-500-drone-bases/
- Published: 2026-08-21T03:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-21T03:14:59.000Z
- Description: Each Prime Air hub covers about 175 square miles, and every community inside that range still has to approve the service for itself.
- Author: Christian Maidman
- Tags: Companies, Business Bagel News

The promise is older than most of the drones. Jeff Bezos showed a prototype on 60 Minutes in December 2013 and said the service would take four or five years, optimistically, with the regulator as the biggest hurdle.

Amazon said on Wednesday that Prime Air will reach nearly 500 American cities and towns by the end of 2026, which it describes as a sixfold increase on its current footprint. It flies from 11 sites across seven states today, with Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, Atlanta and Boise named as launching soon.

## What the 500 counts

It is not 500 new drone bases. Each Prime Air site serves an area of roughly 175 square miles, and the 500 figure counts the municipalities that fall inside the range of the planned hubs. GeekWire is the only outlet to spell that distinction out; Reuters describes the same coverage as a single hub reaching multiple towns within a roughly 7.5-mile radius.

The service is narrow by design. Nearly anything five pounds or under that fits in a large shoebox is eligible, which Amazon says covers more than 60% of the items customers most frequently buy. Thirty-minute delivery is the best case; most orders arrive around 60 minutes after checkout. Prime members pay nothing on orders of $50 or more, $2.99 below that, and non-members $4.99.

## The part Amazon cannot schedule

Every community it enters needs its own approval on top of the Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 certification Prime Air already holds, which usually means a council hearing with residents in the room. At a planning and zoning meeting in Nampa, Idaho, in May, Amazon executive Sam Bailey took about an hour of questions on noise, safety, logistics and bird safety before the board voted unanimously to approve. At a hearing in Richardson, Texas, in March, one resident told the council she consistently hears the buzz of drones overhead and finds it irritating and not very peaceful. Bailey said Amazon had changed the average flight height and rerouted drones over commercial zones more consistently.

Three investigations are open at once. The National Transportation Safety Board is still looking into two Amazon drones that collided with a crane in Tolleson, Arizona in October, the FAA is examining a drone that snapped an internet cable in a Waco, Texas yard in November, and the UK's Air Accidents Investigation Branch opened a probe last month after a Prime Air drone came down in a garden in Darlington. Amazon says that drone operated as designed and landed safely, with no injuries. Meanwhile Alphabet's Wing crossed a million commercial drone deliveries earlier this year, and Zipline has made two million.