Wing’s Walmart delivery page lists 19 metros, five marked “Now serving” and 14 “Coming soon,” after Monday’s addition of Denver and Seattle for 2027. Bentonville, Walmart’s hometown, is not on it, and neither is anywhere in Arkansas.
Walmart executive Greg Cathey said at the UP.Summit conference, Fortune reported on October 1, 2025, that Walmart would add drone delivery at a Walmart across the street from its old Bentonville headquarters and at a store in nearby Rogers. A month earlier, Bentonville’s Planning Commission had voted 7-0 to approve a Wing drone nest in 27 parking spaces at Store #100, 406 S. Walton Blvd.
13 of Wing’s 14 Coming-Soon Metros Were Named After Walmart Picked Bentonville
Of the 14 metros Wing marks coming soon, only Tampa, named in June 2025, was announced before Cathey spoke. Wing and Walmart added Los Angeles, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Miami on January 11, 2026, seven more metros on June 8, and Denver and Seattle on October 5.
Wing’s October 5 release named Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston and Orlando as places the partnership already reaches, and quoted Cathey, now Walmart’s senior vice president for eCommerce transformation, on Seattle and Denver. It did not mention Bentonville, and Wing’s Walmart page does not mention Arkansas as of October 6.
Bentonville’s Permit Allows a Wing Nest About 210 Feet From Residential Property
Walmart’s engineering firm, CEI, asked for two fenced enclosures at Store #100: a Nest where drones charge and park, taking 27 spaces, and an Autoloader where staff load orders. Flights would run 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, with the nearest residential property about 210 feet (64 meters) east.
City staff recommended nine conditions, including monthly reports of average daily flights and any NTSB-reportable events on request, a 24/7 emergency contact, property-line noise checks, a quarterly airspace meeting with city and Bentonville Municipal Airport staff, an eight-foot fence, and validity for one year from approval. The commission discussed the hours, the airspace meeting and the fence, then approved the permit 7-0 with no public comment, according to the staff report and minutes. The Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported it that day as a one-year permit. Under staff’s recommended term, the permit would have run to September 2, 2026. The minutes do not restate the one-year condition. No renewal or extension has appeared on a Planning Commission or City Council agenda since (a staff-level extension would not need to), and DroneXL has not asked the city whether the permit remains in force. Fortune’s account of Cathey’s remarks a month later named neither the store number nor the drone operator.
The lot has hosted delivery drones before. DroneUp ran a two-story hub for Store #100, which DroneXL covered in 2022, and CEI’s application says the earlier tower was demolished when the store expanded into that area. The next line reads: “Walmart has changed to a new drone company, Wing.” Walmart ended its DroneUp partnership at the end of 2024.
The FAA’s Public Reviews List Only Zipline in Arkansas
The FAA’s national drone delivery assessment, signed July 28, 2026, lists Wing’s completed reviews in Texas, Virginia, Florida and North Carolina. Arkansas appears in its operator table once, under Zipline’s Pea Ridge hub. The FAA cleared that hub on March 24, 2026 for 400 deliveries a day.
The table, in the FAA’s programmatic assessment, is dated July 2025. The agency’s public list of drone delivery reviews, last updated September 24, 2026, has since added Wing decisions for Houston and Atlanta, and its only Arkansas documents are Zipline’s, including the Pea Ridge re-evaluation that places the hub in a Walmart parking lot. Walmart U.S. chief executive David Guggina said on Walmart’s May earnings call that its drone delivery covered 66 locations across four states, Arkansas among them, Retail Dive reported.
The Democrat-Gazette has described Wing as already flying here. Its reporter Serenah McKay wrote in January that “Wing also operates from Walmart stores” in Dallas-Fort Worth and Northwest Arkansas, wording close to Walmart’s own June 2025 release about “existing operations in Northwest Arkansas.” A Nexstar wire story in June and KNWA on October 6 listed Bentonville among Wing’s announced expansion plans. DroneXL found no Wing release, FAA environmental document or city agenda describing Wing flights from Store #100, though none of those records would necessarily show a launch.
A Wing launch would not need a public FAA review of its own either. Under the national assessment, a site that fits its limits can be approved through an internal FAA checklist without a new comment period, as DroneXL’s guide to how drone delivery approval works explains.
DroneXL’s Take
Bentonville wrote the most useful drone nest conditions I’ve read this year. Monthly flight counts and property-line noise checks are figures Wing has not given DroneXL: we sent Wing 30 written safety questions on September 8 and have not had one answer. Walmart’s hometown got a staff condition making those flight counts available to the city on request, in a single meeting.
If you live near Store #100, ask the Planning Department whether case CU25-0028 is still active and whether the city has ever requested a flight report under it. If the permit has lapsed, the next Wing application in Northwest Arkansas should carry the same conditions. Northglenn, Colorado, where staff expect a first reading of a drone hub ordinance on October 12, could borrow them too. I suspect Store #100 cleared its city paperwork and then stalled. Nothing public puts it among the 19 metros on Wing’s own list, and the only Walmart drone site in Arkansas with a public FAA record is Zipline’s Pea Ridge hub.
Sources: City of Bentonville Planning Commission packet, Sept. 2, 2025, case CU25-0028, Bentonville Planning Commission minutes, Sept. 2, 2025, Fortune, Oct. 1, 2025, FAA programmatic environmental assessment for Part 135 drone package delivery, FAA re-evaluation for Zipline, Pea Ridge, Arkansas, Wing, October 5, 2026 announcement, Wing Walmart delivery page, 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.
