Amazon drone expansion plans spark opposition from Texas residents

On a recent weekday morning, John Case heard a familiar hum outside his quiet home in suburban College Station, Texas. He immediately recognized it as AmazonPrime Air drones whizz by on delivery routes, unloading small packages of batteries, vitamins and dog food.

“It sounded like a giant beehive,” Case, a semiretired orthodontist, said in an interview. “You knew it was coming because it was pretty loud.”

Case, who has lived in the college town for 40 years, and his wife, often sees drones while walking around the neighborhood. Case said nurses, police officers and firefighters working the night shift have said drones disrupt their daytime sleep.

The noise complaints are just the latest challenge for Amazon’s drone program, which has struggled since it began test deliveries in 2022. Regulatory hurdlesmissed deadlines and Last year’s layoffswhich came as Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy is aggressively cutting costs, has halted progress on the ambitious service. Assumption Amazon founder Jeff Bezos More than ten years ago.

The college town, about 100 miles northwest of Houston, has been a major testing ground for Prime Air, as Amazon sought to prove it could deliver packages to homes by drone in less than an hour. Rockford, California, south of Sacramento, was another test market, but Amazon shut down operations there in 2017. April. The company is Seeking approval Received regulatory approval to begin deliveries in Tolleson, Arizona, west of Phoenix.

As Amazon prepares to scale up Prime Air and expand it to more areas, it’s running into another reason why that won’t be so easy. In a July letter to the Federal Aviation Administration, College Station Mayor John Nichols wrote that residents of College Station, home to Texas A&M University, have grown tired of drones buzzing loudly near their homes.

“Since establishing the drone base in College Station, residents of neighborhoods near the Prime Air facility have expressed concerns to City Council about drone noise levels, particularly during takeoff and landing and during some deliveries,” Nichols wrote.

Nichols’ letter is proposal Amazon has applied to the Federal Aviation Administration to allow the company to increase the number of daily delivery flights from the current 200 to 469. Amazon is asking to be able to operate between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., rather than limited to daytime operations as it does now, and to expand its delivery range from the current 44 square miles to 174 square miles around the company’s drone port.

A month before Amazon filed its request to the FAA, local residents called on local lawmakers to intervene in the company’s expansion plans. At a June City Council meeting, Ralph Thomas Moore played a recording of a chainsaw to illustrate the noise levels of drones, saying his neighborhood is “less than 500 feet from the launch pad.”

Moore said at the conference that if Amazon’s wish is realized, the drone will take off and land 940 times, so that the drone can deliver a package weighing no more than 5 pounds each time.

“This is what Amazon is asking the FAA to approve,” he said. “This is a huge violation of our personal space and has a significant impact on everyone in the community.”

University City Mayor Bryan Woods said at the meeting that city officials tested the Prime Air drone and found that its noise levels ranged from 47 to 61 decibels. Occupational Safety and Health Administrationchainsaws typically register 125 decibels, and heavy equipment typically registers 95 to 110 decibels.

Prime Air is part of Amazon’s efforts to find faster and more affordable solutions to the so-called “last mile” problem of getting packages from warehouses to customers’ doorsteps. Supporters say drone deliveries could offset the costs of maintaining a fleet of delivery vehicles while reducing the need for gas-guzzling delivery trucks. But only if Amazon can make it a service available to the masses.

In May, Amazon Achieved important milestone The Federal Aviation Administration said it would allow the company’s delivery drones to fly greater distances and without the need for ground personnel to observe each flight. Declaration It said the move “laid the foundation” for the service to enter new markets.

“We appreciate the College Station community and take local feedback into account whenever possible when making operational decisions for Prime Air,” Amazon spokesman Sam Stephenson told CNBC in a statement. “We are proud of the thousands of deliveries we have completed and the hundreds of customers we have served.”

Amazon says it plans to launch a smaller, quieter drone Known as MK30which yes The company expects to begin operations in College Station and Phoenix once it receives approval from the FAA.

Stephenson said the MK30 is “designed to reduce the perceived noise of a drone by nearly half.” In addition to descending to drop packages, it will also fly at higher cruising altitudes, between 180 and 377 feet above the ground, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

But many residents want Amazon to go further and leave their community entirely. As concerns grew, Prime Air leaders held a Zoom meeting with College Station residents on July 24.

Matt McCardle, Prime Air’s head of regulatory affairs and strategy, said at the meeting that the company will not renew its lease in College Station and will move elsewhere by October 2025, according to a recording obtained by CNBC.

Amazon’s Stephenson confirmed that the company is “considering a variety of potential paths forward,” including the possibility of alternative drone sites.

The company also agreed to reduce the number of flights per hour, said Bob Yancy, a College Station City Council member who plans to propose that Amazon move its drone port to the site of the former Macy’s, now owned by the city and located in a nearby shopping center.

In April this year, Amazon Indicates planned integration Rather than building standalone drone facilities, Prime Air is integrating them into its same-day delivery network. That’s what the company is doing in the Phoenix area, where it has a launch pad. Expected It is located on the same site as Amazon warehouse SAZ 2. A few hundred feet away from the facility is a major neighborhood called Roosevelt Park.

Yancey said at the meeting that he still enjoys the program and is grateful to have toothbrushes, cookies and aspirin delivered to his home within an hour.

He hopes Prime Air will stay in college towns. But for it to work, he said, Amazon will have to make its drones less noisy or keep them away from residential areas.

“I think the title of the program is — great technology, wrong location,” Yancey said.

watch: Amazon has made 100 drone deliveries in the past decade.