Amazon will significantly ramp up Prime Air drone capacity this year as part of a multi-pronged initiative to move beyond same-day delivery and deliver e-commerce orders within hours, or even minutes, CEO Andy Jassy said in an annual letter to shareholders on Thursday. Speed is the driving force for Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) logistics operation because management says customers are more likely to complete online orders when faster delivery is promised. At the same time, there is a counter movement in retail away from ultra-fast delivery based on concerns about the unsustainable cost of service and whether consumers really expect quick fulfillment turnaround.
Jassy said Prime Air service will be able to serve communities with 30 million customers by the end of the year, with a much wider catalog of goods to choose from, and is expected to annually deliver 500 million packages by the end of the decade in under 30 minutes. The ability to scale up drone deliveries is possible now because of more than 85 same-day fulfillment centers that carry Amazon's top 90,000 products and serve as launch pads for the autonomous delivery vehicles. The more streamlined fulfillment centers have already enabled Amazon to deliver more than 500 million same-day packages in 2026 so far, according to the CEO.
Amazon is scheduled to begin serving customers in the south Chicago suburbs out of two fulfillment centers by late spring or early summer. Each site will have 12 to 20 drones. Prime Air's flagship MK30 drone weighs 83 pounds and can carry items weighing up to 5 pounds.
The drones cruise at about 73 mph and 200 to 300 feet high. Six vertical propellers provide lift, with staggered tandem wings supporting cruise flight. They can fly in light precipitation and winds faster than 20 mph.
Parcels are stored in a shoebox-sized fuselage and dropped to the ground from about 13 feet up. Prime Air in recent months has launched in parts of Kansas City, Kansas; San Antonio and Waco, Texas; the suburbs of Detroit, Dallas-Fort Worth; Tampa, Florida; and Tolleson, Arizona, west of Phoenix. Amazon will continue to focus on ultra-fast ground delivery within 20 minutes, which it is testing in India and the United Arab Emirates.
The service, called Amazon Now, is also available in parts of Seattle and Philadelphia, and is expanding to Europe. It leverages strategically located, urban micro-fulfillment centers where on-demand workers pick up packaged groceries and household items and deliver them. In India, where Amazon has more than 360 micro-fulfillment centers (and more on the way), Amazon Now orders are increasing 25% month-over-month, with Prime members tripling their shopping frequency once they start using it, Jassy said.
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