Amazon Plans Further Drone Expansion—But Will Shutter Calif. Prime Air Site

For Amazon customers in the West Valley of Phoenix, orders will soon be flying off the shelves—literally.

The e-commerce giant announced earlier this week it would launch drone deliveries in the Tolleson, Ariz., area starting later this year.

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In a blog post, the company noted that it has begun working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to obtain the permits for flying drones in Tolleson. All of the drones will launch directly from facilities next to the same-day delivery site Amazon owns there.

According to Amazon, the facility serves a dual purpose: it’s part delivery station and part fulfillment center, which means it can deliver packages to its customers even faster in large metro areas.

While smaller, split-function, same-day facilities inevitably hold less inventory than a standard fulfillment center, the sites are located nearby Amazon’s larger hubs for convenient access to a slew of other goods. The company noted in its blog that it can offer same-day delivery on millions of items.

Kate Gallego, Phoenix’s mayor, said the Prime purveyor’s plans to bring drones to the Phoenix area could have positive sustainability impacts.

“This kind of delivery is the future, and it’s exciting that it will be starting in the Phoenix Metro Area,” Gallego said in a statement. “The shift toward zero-emission package delivery will help us reduce local pollution and further cement our city as a hotbed for the innovative technology of tomorrow.”

But as Amazon pursues the action in Arizona, it will also look to sunset its drone operations in Lockeford, Calif., one of two locations it launched Prime Air through in 2022. Though it will close the delivery site in Lockewood, it plans to offer the employees supporting that location jobs at other Amazon sites.

Amazon did not explain its decision to close the Lockeford facility, but it could be due to multiple factors. In 2020, Lockeford had just over 3,000 residents, per U.S. Census data. While Lodi City, nearer to Lockeford, had a 2020 population of over 65,000, the median income in Lockeford, Lodi City and other surrounding areas comes in lower than California’s at-large median income, which may mean the households have less disposable cash.

And while the town is situated near three of California’s cities—Sacramento, San Jose and San Francisco—none of those cities are near enough to allow for adequate drone deliveries on a regular basis.

Most drones can only deliver to locations up to 10 miles away from their starting point. Sacramento is the closest city of the three to Lockeford, and even still, it’s situated over 35 miles away. Even if Prime Air operations had been placed closer to Sacramento, some drone models struggle to navigate urban areas—or densely packed suburban ones.

Though Lockeford’s Prime Air operations won’t be long for the world, Amazon currently has not announced any changes to its drone delivery operations in College Station, Tex. It said it has plans to expand drone operations into other cities in 2025, but it did not specify which cities would come next.

While it has not announced the scope of the project or the cities that will be added, Amazon also has plans to expand its Prime Air operations into the United Kingdom and Italy later this year.

Amazon isn’t the only mega retailer testing out drones’ viability. Direct competitor Walmart has also gotten in on the fun, albeit by leveraging strategic partners like DroneUp, Wing and Zipline. In January, it announced it would enable drone delivery to 75 percent of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, which encompasses 1.8 million households.

That adds to its existing presence in parts of Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Utah and Virginia, where it has already been delivering by drone. The service allows customers to order an array of items, from birthday gifts, to groceries and more.

Grand View Research expects the U.S. drone market’s growth to continue steadily increasing, predicting a compound annual growth rate of 39.4 percent between 2024 and 2030. And according to the FAA, it has issued over 375,000 commercial drone registrations to date.

Though its specific plans for future expansion remain to be unveiled, Amazon has been doing work behind the scenes to make the possibility of rapid expansion—both domestically and internationally—a reality.

Earlier this month, Amazon’s Prime Air unit inked a partnership with Embention. According to a press release from the aerospace manufacturing company, it will provide Amazon with safety-related hardware and software components for future development.

The e-commerce giant has also begun testing its latest drone model, the MK30, which will allow for better precision in densely-packed suburban areas. According to the company’s blog, the safer, quieter drones will officially take flight for customer deliveries in the latter half of this year.