Amazon’s North Haven drone hub was described to the board of the Connecticut Airport Authority by its executive director, Michael Shea, who told members the aircraft weigh about 80 pounds (36 kilograms), carry packages up to 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms), drop them from about 13 feet (4 meters) and fly about seven miles (11 kilometers) from Amazon’s warehouse at 409 Washington Avenue. NBC Connecticut, by its own account the only news organization in the room, reported the briefing on September 24 without dating the meeting.
Shea told the board that Amazon “coordinated extensively with the FAA to control the airspace,” and that CAA staff have been in touch with the company about its plans. The only meeting on the authority’s public calendar between DEEP’s September 16 notice and NBC’s report was the September 23 board meeting. The draft minutes, posted on ctairports.org, record the executive director’s report in one sentence, “Mr. Shea provided a general update to the board,” and note under the economic development report that he described “several business development initiatives,” none of them named. Amazon, North Haven, drones and the FAA appear nowhere in them.
Connecticut’s Airport Authority Runs Six Airports and No Airspace
The Connecticut Airport Authority is the quasi-public agency created in 2011 to run Bradley International and five general aviation airports: Hartford-Brainard, Waterbury-Oxford, Groton-New London, Danielson and Windham. NBC Connecticut said the authority has a stake because drone deliveries use Connecticut airspace. Airspace is federal.
Tweed New Haven, the airport nearest the North Haven site, is not on the CAA’s list. What the authority got was a briefing its own draft minutes do not record, and Shea’s account of it names no document. The one federal paper Connecticut has published on the hub, the coastal consistency request, is not an approval of anything. The FAA’s own drone environmental review page listed no Connecticut filing when DroneXL checked it again on September 26, six days after the first check, and the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is still taking comment on the FAA’s coastal consistency request through October 1, with a decision due by October 16. Whether the North Haven hub gets a site review of its own or rides the national finding the FAA signed on July 28 is the question that request does not answer, and “all necessary approvals” does not either.
The numbers Shea gave the board are close to the FAA’s. The document DEEP is reviewing puts the MK30 at 78 pounds (35 kilograms) empty and 83.2 pounds (38 kilograms) at takeoff, with a 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) delivery radius and up to 1,000 flights a day. The 13-foot drop matches.
North Haven Approved the Ground in May, Not This Month
North Haven’s Planning and Zoning Commission approved Amazon’s drone delivery building at the Washington Avenue warehouse, application P26-17, by a 5-0 vote on May 4, according to the town’s minutes. NBC Connecticut’s September 24 report says officials approved part of the proposal, and dates nothing.
The perimeter fence and guardhouses passed the same night. The only action since was a 5-0 vote on August 3 accepting revised fence plans, and the commission’s September 14 agenda carries no Prime Air item. Amazon’s Sam Bailey told the commission in May that the FAA has sole jurisdiction over altitude and flight patterns, described the aircraft as 70-pound drones, and promised a public information session; none had been announced when DroneXL searched for one on September 26. Amazon’s stated goal is nearly 500 cities and towns by the end of 2026, and its August list of next markets named Syracuse, not New Haven.
DroneXL’s Take
The only public record of Connecticut’s airport agency being told what Amazon wants to fly over Hamden and Wallingford is a TV reporter’s notes from a meeting whose own minutes say “general update.” Shea’s assurance that Amazon has worked with the FAA on every approval it needs is the kind of sentence that closes a question for a board and opens one for everyone else: which approvals, under which review, on what document. My read is that the CAA was briefed because it is the aviation body the state has, not because it approves anything in this, and the airport nearest the hub is not even one of its own. The people who do have standing are the residents with five days left. A comment filed with DEEP before October 1 goes on the federal record, and here is how to file one. A briefing that leaves no trace in the minutes does not.
Sources: NBC Connecticut, Connecticut Airport Authority draft minutes, September 23, 2026, The Register Citizen via GovTech, FAA NEPA and Drones, Amazon.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
