Amazon Prime Air launches in Kansas City, its seventh US market, days after Texas drone crash

Amazon activated Prime Air drone delivery in Kansas City, Kansas today, February 9, making it the seventh metropolitan area in the United States to receive the service, as reported by KCTV5. The launch comes just five days after an MK30 drone crashed into a Richardson, Texas apartment building, leaving smoke and debris on a public sidewalk.

Here is what you need to know:

• The Development: Amazon launched Prime Air drone delivery from facilities next to its fulfillment center at 6925 Riverview Ave. in Kansas City, Kansas.
• The Details: Packages up to 5 pounds, within a 7.5-mile radius, during daylight hours. Prime members pay $4.99 per delivery. Non-Prime customers pay $9.99.
• The Context: Kansas City joins Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth, Waco, San Antonio, Tampa, and Detroit as active Prime Air markets.

Amazon expands despite a growing list of MK30 incidents

The Kansas City launch is Amazon’s most aggressive expansion move since it activated Pontiac, Michigan and Waco, Texas back-to-back in early November 2025. The pace tells you something about Amazon’s internal calculus: they believe every delay costs more than the bad press from crashes.

And there have been crashes. On February 4, a resident named Cessy Johnson filmed an MK30 drifting into the side of an apartment complex on Routh Creek Parkway in Richardson, Texas. The video shows propeller fragments falling to the ground and smoke rising from the wreckage. “The propellers on the thing were still moving, and you could smell it was starting to burn,” Johnson told local outlets. Richardson firefighters responded but confirmed no fire broke out. Amazon had launched service in Richardson less than two months earlier.

That incident followed a pattern. In November 2025, an MK30 severed an internet cable during ascent in Waco. In October 2025, two MK30 drones slammed into a construction crane in Tolleson, Arizona, sparking a fire. The FAA and NTSB both investigated. Amazon had already suspended all US drone operations in January 2025 after software-related crashes at its Oregon testing facility.

The MK30’s sense-and-avoid system faces questions

Amazon’s MK30 is an 80-pound hexacopter that cruises at 200 to 300 feet AGL at speeds around 73 mph. Amazon says the drone has a “sense-and-avoid” suite designed to detect and navigate around wires, chimneys, and obstacles.

The recurring collisions with stationary objects, though, raise real questions about how well that system works in practice. A crane. An internet cable. An apartment wall. These are not edge cases. They are the kinds of obstacles that fill every suburban delivery zone in America, Kansas City included.

The FAA’s May 2025 approval for Amazon to deliver products containing lithium-ion batteries expanded Prime Air’s catalog significantly. But every new market and every expanded product category increases flight volume, and every additional flight tests those sense-and-avoid systems.

The economics driving Amazon’s expansion pace

Amazon’s goal of delivering 500 million packages annually by drone by 2030 depends on claiming fresh markets fast. Internal projections we reported on in December 2024 showed delivery costs of roughly $63 per package against customer pricing of $4.99 to $9.99. That math only works at massive scale, which explains the speed of expansion even when the safety record is far from clean.

DroneXL’s Take

Amazon launching Kansas City on the same day the Richardson crash is still making national headlines is a deliberate choice. They are betting that momentum matters more than optics. Every week Prime Air sits grounded is a week that Walmart, Zipline, and Wing gain ground.

But the MK30’s collision record is becoming hard to ignore. Cranes, cables, apartment buildings. These are stationary objects. If the sense-and-avoid system cannot reliably detect a building wall, Kansas City residents living within that 7.5-mile delivery radius should be paying attention.

Expect the FAA to face growing pressure from groups like AOPA to tighten oversight before approving the Part 108 rule that would expand commercial BVLOS operations nationwide. Amazon’s crash timeline is handing critics exactly the ammunition they need. Within six months, I expect the FAA will impose mandatory reporting requirements for all Prime Air incidents, not just the ones that make the news.

Editorial Note: AI tools were used to assist with research and archive retrieval for this article. All reporting, analysis, and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo.