Amazon's Drone Delivery Program Was So Annoying That Homeowners Begged It to Stop

Amazon's delivery drones became so disruptive to locals that the tech giant is reportedly giving up its lease in Texas, with the future of the pilot program now uncertain there.

As Wired reports, the incredibly noisy aircraft quickly turned into a pest, with local master gardener Mark Smith describing the cacophony as if "your neighbor runs their leaf blower all day long."

"It was just incessant," he told the publication.

Apart from irking the locals, Amazon's experiment to make last-mile deliveries using drones has run into plenty of challenges, from regulatory hurdles to severe technical limitations.

In College Station, a city 90 minutes northwest of Houston, the drones have united a dreaded foe of any local project: NIMBYs who became fed up with the racket. As Wired reports, hundreds of residents joined to oppose Amazon's proposal to more than double the number of daily drone flights.

Despite the Federal Aviation Administration ultimately deciding that locals' complaints were "meritless or outside its purview," Amazon has seemingly taken the concerns to heart.

The company reduced the number of flights, switched to a quieter drone, and is planning to let its lease in College Station expire by the end of September.

And the project, launched in 2022 and hyped immensely by Amazon, is seemingly already winding down, with Smith telling Wired that he hasn't seen a drone in weeks.

"We appreciate the community of College Station and take local feedback into account wherever possible when making operational decisions for Prime Air," an Amazon spokesperson said after we first ran this blog. "We’re proud of the thousands of deliveries we’ve made and the hundreds of customers we deliver to. As our program evolves, we’re considering a variety of potential paths forward — including the possibility of alternate sites.”

Amazon has launched its drones in three locations so far: College Station, a depot in rural California, and near one of its warehouses outside of Phoenix, Arizona.

Its pilot in California was shut down in April 2024. If it were to shut down its services in College Station as well, its only location left would be in Arizona.

Overall, it feels like the project is turning into a major headache for Amazon. In January, the company had to pause all of its drone deliveries after two of its latest models crashed due to rain at a testing facility in Oregon, Bloomberg reported at the time, though an Amazon spokesperson denied the pause was due to the accidents.

“Recent reports that a pause in our drone operations was the result of two testing incidents aren’t true," the spokesperson said. "We paused our operations so that we could safely and properly conduct a software update on the MK30 drone. Safety underscores everything we do in Prime Air and our MK30 drone is safe and compliant. Our services will resume once these updates are completed and approved by the FAA.”

Last year, Wired also found that Amazon's delivery drones simply couldn't bear the extreme heat in Arizona and had to be grounded when temperatures exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Meanwhile, its competitor at Alphabet subsidiary Wing is racing ahead, and is looking for regulatory approval for a proposed 30,000 daily flights over Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, three times as many as before.

Updated with additional comment from Amazon to reflect that the program's future in College Station is now uncertain.

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