Amazon’s Prime Air autonomous drones to reach 500 US cities

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Amazon plans to grow Prime Air from its current coverage to nearly 500 US cities by end of 2026, a six-fold expansion that would place drone delivery within reach of tens of millions of US customers. The scale is possible because each drone operates autonomously without a dedicated human operator per flight—a Detect-and-Avoid system continuously scans airspace and makes real-time obstacle avoidance decisions onboard. Prime Air holds FAA Part 135 certification, the same license category used by commercial air carriers and the highest tier available for drone operations. That certification is the scaling mechanism: it allows Amazon to add new metro areas without a separate regulatory waiver per location. The drones use onboard cameras and sensors for navigation and delivery, and Amazon states no live camera feed is transmitted to a human monitor. The company claims noise at delivery is below an idling delivery truck at the curb, lasting about 30 seconds, and comparable to a window fan on low at cruising altitude. The fleet is fully electric. Privacy and noise claims are company-stated and have not been independently verified at the scale of a 500-city deployment.