Amazon’s MK30 delivery drones are flying over Dolton, Illinois, and village officials have begun telling residents to take their concerns to Amazon or the Federal Aviation Administration, CBS Chicago reported on Monday, November 2. Dolton is the second south suburb in a week to send residents elsewhere. Homewood told its residents it cannot ground or quiet the drones, the Country Herald reported on October 26, the day DroneXL reported that Amazon confirmed 21 MK30s were flying from Markham.
Dolton sits roughly five miles east of the Markham warehouse, inside the 7.5-mile (12-kilometer) radius the FAA’s draft gives the MK30, and the village was on the list of eligible communities reported in February. The FAA’s public file for the Chicago hubs, checked on November 4, still ends at a July draft with no decision posted.
Dolton Joins Homewood in Sending Residents Up the Chain. The Advice Has No Name on It
CBS quotes no Dolton official and cites no document. DroneXL found no written version of the advice: the village website carried no drone notice on November 4, its search returns nothing for “drone,” and the agenda for the November 2 board meeting, dated October 30, has no drone item.
Homewood put its version in writing. Federal rules and Illinois law govern commercial drones, the village said, so it cannot prohibit them over the community or regulate their noise while they are airborne, the Country Herald reported. Dolton has given no reason on the record, but the same statute binds it. Section 42.1 of the Illinois Aeronautics Act, 620 ILCS 5/42.1, makes drone regulation an exclusive power of the state and denies home-rule units the right to write their own rules, with one exception for a city of more than a million people, which is Chicago, and a 2024 carve-out for a village’s own parks. DroneXL’s Matteson guide sets out what that leaves a south-suburban village: the building permit, the lot, and a state legislator.
Calling the FAA Gets a Resident a Rule-Violation Desk, Not a Noise Desk
The FAA tells the public to report a drone that is not following its rules to the local Flight Standards District Office, and a dangerous or criminal flight to police first. For the south suburbs that office is the Greater Chicago FSDO in Des Plaines, at (847) 294-8700.
The agency’s safety hotline, at hotline.faa.gov or 866-835-5322, takes reports of regulatory violations and airspace safety issues. A drone flying the way the FAA authorized it to fly is not violating a rule, and noise is the complaint CBS says south-suburban residents are making. The FAA’s own noise figure for the MK30 is in the Chicago draft’s appendix: 63.7 dBA SEL for a drone cruising at 200 feet (61 meters), a figure the FAA corrected from measurements taken at 116 feet, and the number the agency’s Baton Rouge filing compared to an air conditioner heard from 100 feet. Amazon told CBS in October the sound is like a passing car, with no distance or metric attached.
The draft itself is the other problem with “call the FAA.” The agency’s drone environmental review index was last updated October 14 and lists only the July draft assessment for Markham, Matteson and West Chicago, with comment closed August 14. On July 28 the FAA signed a national environmental finding that lets it approve new Part 135 delivery markets on one nationwide study, and 15 states, Illinois among them, have asked the Second Circuit to set it aside. Nothing on the FAA’s index, checked November 4, names the authorization Markham flies under, and Amazon has not said publicly which one it is. Its Prime Air newsroom, read the same day, still carries nothing on Chicago.
The Inbox Homewood Gave Residents Bounced in September. The Phone Line and the Chat Work
Homewood’s announcement gave residents [email protected]. An automated reply Amazon sent DroneXL in September says that inbox is no longer monitored. Residents can call Amazon at 1-888-280-4331 and say it is about drone delivery, or open the customer-service chat and pick “Something Else,” then “Amazon Drone Delivery.”
DroneXL’s guide for residents covers the rest of what is left once the drones are flying. Amazon told CBS the Markham site has 21 drones, that they handle small deliveries while drivers carry everything else, and that nobody watches the onboard cameras live. CBS’s October 14 report put the jobs figure at 30, after Amazon corrected it down from 55 once the story aired.
Complaints to Amazon have moved it before. In Richardson, Texas, where one resident’s tracker logged 52 overflights of her home in a day, enough residents complained, to Amazon and to the city council, that the company raised its average outbound altitude and shifted some routes over commercial land. In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Mayor Jim Petras said he would ask Amazon whether its flight pattern could shift over a more commercial area, the opposite of sending residents to the company themselves. In Westborough, Massachusetts, the select board took the fight to the State House. The hubs and incidents DroneXL has documented are on the Amazon Prime Air tracker.
DroneXL’s Take
Dolton is telling its residents the truth, and the truth under Illinois law is that the village has nothing to offer them. Springfield took that power away in 2018, so a south-suburban trustee can’t do what a Richardson council member or a Westborough select board member can at least attempt. But “call the FAA” is advice that leads nowhere for the complaint people are actually making. The FSDO investigates rule violations, and an MK30 descending into a Dolton backyard the way the FAA let Amazon fly it is not breaking a rule, so a noise complaint has nowhere to land there. The agency that would hear a noise objection is the one that opened a 30-day comment window in July, closed it in August, and has not published a decision since. My read is that Markham flies on the July 28 national finding and the Chicago draft will never be finished, which means that window was the only one the south suburbs get. Volume is what has moved Amazon: in Richardson, enough people complained that the company raised altitudes and moved routes, and dated, timed complaints to Amazon’s phone line are the Dolton equivalent. The other call worth making is to a state representative, because Springfield took Dolton’s power in 2018 and only Springfield can hand it back.
Sources: CBS Chicago, November 2, CBS Chicago, October 14, Country Herald, Village of Dolton, FAA drone environmental review index, FAA, report a drone, FAA Hotline, 620 ILCS 5/42.1.
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
