Wing and Walmart will bring drone delivery to the Denver and Seattle metros in 2027, the companies said Monday, taking the partnership to 19 U.S. metros. Five are flying today: Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando. The other 14 are announced and waiting, and Wing says more than three million customers already have access.
Wing’s two Hummingbird aircraft cruise at up to 60 mph (97 km/h), carry up to five pounds (2.3 kilograms) and lower the box to the yard on a tether. The target is more than 270 Walmart stores and 40 million customers by 2027, and Wing’s chief business officer Heather Rivera said the new metros show “how quickly people across the country are adopting drone delivery.”
Neither Denver nor Seattle was on the list Wing and Walmart gave in January or the one they gave in June. Both metros turned up in September in city land-use filings, and two Denver suburbs had already voted to freeze drone-hub applications before Wing named the city.
Wing’s “Nearly 20” Metros Are 19, and Only Five Have Aircraft in the Air
Wing’s count of nearly 20 metros breaks down as five operating, 12 announced without a launch date, and the two named Monday. The 12 came in three batches: Tampa in June 2025, then Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami on January 11, 2026, then seven more on June 8.
The June seven were Memphis, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Diego, the San Francisco Bay Area and Salt Lake City, as DroneXL reported. Orlando is the only market to go from announced to flying since then, in July. The FAA’s public list of drone-delivery environmental reviews, last updated September 24, carries Wing authorizations for Dallas-Fort Worth, Charlotte, Central Florida, Houston and Atlanta, plus the 2021 Christiansburg, Virginia site, and nothing for any of the 14 announced metros. A national programmatic environmental assessment the FAA signed on July 28 may let Wing skip metro-by-metro filings; Wing has not said whether it will use it.
Denver Suburbs Wrote the Rules Before Wing Said the Word Denver
Castle Rock passed an emergency ordinance on July 20 freezing drone-hub applications for six months, and Parker followed on July 21 with a nine-month pause. Both sit south of Denver. North of the city, Northglenn’s Planning Commission voted September 15 to recommend Colorado’s first drone-delivery ordinance.
Walmart had approached Northglenn about flying Wing drones from its Neighborhood Market at 10755 N. Washington St. The draft keeps launch pads 200 feet (61 meters) from homes and schools, caps ground noise at 65 decibels at the property line and limits hours to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. City Council takes a first reading October 12 and a final vote October 26, as DroneXL reported September 28. Thornton is drafting its own hub ordinance and Longmont is holding two Walmart pre-applications with no hearing scheduled.
Every one of those rules governs the parking lot, and Northglenn’s own staff memo says so: a nest in the next town can serve every address in the city, because the FAA owns the airspace. Wing’s nests have a range of about six miles (9.7 km).
Seattle Starts With One Tacoma Walmart and a Rival Already in FAA Review
Wing’s first sign in Washington was a City of Tacoma building permit for the Walmart Supercenter at 1965 S. Union Ave., filed in September with no FAA filing behind it, as DroneXL reported September 15. Monday’s release quotes Federal Way Mayor Jim Ferrell rather than anyone from Tacoma or Seattle.
Zipline got there earlier on paper. The FAA posted a draft environmental assessment for up to 75 Zipline sites and 500 docks across the Seattle metro in September 2025, took comments through November 2, 2025, and has posted no decision since. Wing’s name does not appear on the FAA’s Washington entries at all. Rivera said in June that Wing was already working with communities in its new markets; what that has produced in Puget Sound so far is one store permit in Tacoma.
Ferrell’s statement in the release closes: “The future has arrived and its being delivered by Walmart by drone!”
DroneXL’s Take
Wing keeps letting its permits announce its markets, and Colorado shows the bill for that. Castle Rock and Parker did not freeze hubs because a Walmart lot scared them. They froze them because the first thing their planners saw was a pre-application for an 18-drone port, filed while no delivery operator had said the word Denver in public, and with none of the altitude, noise and frequency figures that Northglenn is now writing into law. Wing has had DroneXL’s 30 written safety questions since September 8 and has answered none of them, so I don’t expect a Thornton planner to have better luck.
A pad moratorium cannot stop the flights, and Northglenn’s memo says that in plain words. But it can stop the pad, and a Wing network is nothing without pads in Walmart lots six miles apart. Every month a suburb spends on a moratorium is a month of Denver that Wing cannot serve, and the company bought those months by staying quiet.
If you live in Thornton, Longmont or anywhere else on the Denver survey list, the operational narrative in Northglenn’s draft is the clause to ask your council for: altitude, noise figure, aircraft count and flight frequency, in a public filing, before the first delivery. It is the only place so far where Wing will have to put those numbers on paper.
Sources: Wing, October 5, 2026 announcement, Wing, June 2026 seven-market announcement, FAA Public Involvement and Environmental Review for Drone Operations, City of Northglenn staff memorandum #29-2026, DroneXL Wing tracker
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
