Drones over North Myrtle Beach: what Amazon asked for, who decides, what's left
A plain-language guide for residents before the Planning Commission's October 20 vote on Amazon's drone launch pad. Amazon has named North Myrtle Beach. The sky belongs to the FAA. The pad, for now, belongs to the city.
The short version
North Myrtle Beach, 18,790 people at the north end of the Grand Strand, is the first South Carolina town Amazon has asked to host a drone delivery pad: a 13,627-square-foot fenced paddock with six launch pads behind its warehouse at 8651 Water Tower Road. Zoning staff classed it as accessory to the warehouse, so the seven-member Planning Commission decides, not the City Council. It withdrew an approval motion September 22, held a workshop October 7, and votes October 20.
Amazon told the workshop that overflights are the FAA's decision. The FAA told a local station that community concerns belong to the operator and the city. That leaves one document anyone in town will sign. This guide is about what goes into it, for North Myrtle Beach and the neighbors inside the same 7.5-mile circle.
Every block is marked Every US town or North Myrtle Beach.
If you remember three things
The pad is the city's call. The flights are not. Approving the paddock authorizes no flight; Amazon needs the FAA for that, and the FAA's part has no public comment step.
The vote is October 20, 5 p.m. The Planning Commission can approve, approve with conditions, deny or postpone. Conditions written into Z-26-22 bind the site afterward.
A decibel needs a distance. Amazon's slide says 68. The FAA's file for the same aircraft says 82 at 20 feet from the pad and 92.1 (sound exposure) at 25 feet from a drop.
Four questions, four parts
The tabs across the top are this guide's chapters. Each card below is one of them, labeled the same way. Start with the question that is yours.
Where DroneXL stands
DroneXL is not against drone delivery. Blood and organs between hospitals, a defibrillator to a heart attack before the ambulance, medication to someone who can't get out, tools and supplies to search-and-rescue teams in terrain a truck can't reach: those flights earn their noise, and some of them already fly. Everyday packages to homes may earn it too.
What we are for is doing it the right way: the least disruptive, safest, most accountable version, with the people living under the flight paths part of the conversation before the first flight rather than after. The country is in the middle of working out what that looks like. This guide, and the survey at the end of it, exist so that this town's answer is on the record.
Three things to hold onto
The sky is federal
Since 1958 the FAA has had sole authority over the navigable airspace. A city cannot ban overflight, set an altitude, or write a drone curfew. A federal judge struck down a city that tried in 2017.
The ground is local
Where a drone lands, where a package is dropped, whether a facility can be built, and under what conditions: that is zoning and land use, and it is the city's.
The window is before the first flight
Since July 28, 2026 the FAA approves most new hubs with no public comment period. A town that writes its rules early has leverage. A town that waits finds out from a press release.
Who delivers by drone in the United States
Three companies are rolling out home delivery at scale and saying so: Amazon, Wing and Zipline. Others, among them Flytrex, Manna and Wingcopter, fly trials and small services in the US without announced rollout plans; this guide adds them the day that changes.
Four words you'll see
- Nest
- Wing's name for its base: a fenced patch of a store's parking lot where its drones take off, land, recharge, and are loaded with the order by store staff. Nothing is launched from your street.
- Hub
- The same thing for Amazon, in the parking lot of one of its own warehouses. Zipline calls its version a dock.
- Service area
- The circle around a nest or hub that the drones can reach: about 6 miles for Wing, 7.5 for Amazon. Every home inside it can order. The base sits in one town; the circle usually covers several.
- Overflight
- A drone passing above your property on its way to someone else's. The FAA controls it; no town or homeowner can refuse it.
Wing (Alphabet)
Not namedWing has not named South Carolina. Its nearest authorized market on the DroneXL tracker is Charlotte, North Carolina. No South Carolina filing under Wing on the FAA's public environmental index as of October 11, 2026.
- Aircraft
- Hummingbird, 14 lb (a 24 lb version in part of the fleet)
- Flies from
- A nest (its takeoff, landing and loading base) in a retailer's parking lot, usually a Walmart
- Reach
- About 6 miles from the nest
- Delivery
- Hovers at about 23 ft, lowers the package on a tether. Never lands at your house
- Hours (FAA)
- 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
- Volume
- Up to 400 flights a day per nest
Amazon Prime Air
Pad in city reviewApplied August 18, 2026 for a six-pad paddock behind its warehouse at 8651 Water Tower Road. Planning Commission votes October 20. No FAA environmental document for South Carolina on the public index as of October 11, 2026; Amazon says it is separately pursuing federal authorization.
- Aircraft
- MK30, 83 lb at takeoff, no parachute
- Flies from
- Amazon's own warehouses
- Reach
- 7.5 miles from the hub
- Delivery
- Drops the package from about 13 ft
- Hours (FAA)
- 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m.
- Volume
- Up to 1,000 flights a day per hub
Zipline
Not namedZipline has not named South Carolina. Its nearest site on the DroneXL tracker is Kannapolis, in the Charlotte area. No South Carolina filing under Zipline on the FAA's public environmental index as of October 11, 2026.
- Aircraft
- P2 Zip, 55 lb, carries a parachute
- Delivery
- Hovers at about 300 ft; a tethered "droid" lowers the package
- Reach
- About 10 miles
How a drone would actually reach your street
Unlike most towns in this series, North Myrtle Beach already knows where the base would be. Amazon's same-day delivery warehouse sits on 19.73 acres at 8651 Water Tower Road in the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park, west of the Intracoastal Waterway, and the paddock would take 24 parking spaces in the paved service lot behind it. From there, every Prime Air hub in Amazon's FAA filings serves a 7.5-mile circle, up to 1,000 flights a day, 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. That circle covers all of North Myrtle Beach, Atlantic Beach, Briarcliffe Acres and the north end of Myrtle Beach. Those towns have no vote on the pad. They would be under the same drones.
The Amazon point is the Water Tower Road site as placed on the DroneXL tracker from OpenStreetMap, not the surveyed parcel. Every other point is an approximate landmark position, and the distances are DroneXL's straight-line measurements from the site, published October 2, 2026. The 7.5-mile ring is the service radius in every Amazon FAA filing; Amazon's actual delivery boundary can exclude any of these places, and the FAA's airspace around Grand Strand Airport will shape the routes.
How approval works now
The part most towns get wrong. Since July 28, 2026 there is usually no public comment step at all.
The operator picks a site and files with that town, if the work triggers a permit
Often it doesn't. Amazon told a Massachusetts audience that about 80% of its hubs were approved administratively, with no hearing. Northglenn, CO heard from Walmart, and Tacoma, WA received a Walmart building permit application, weeks before Wing announced either metro.
The FAA checks the site against one national environmental document
Signed July 28, 2026. A hub under 1,150 deliveries a day, at least 600 ft from homes at full volume, aircraft under 110 lb, flights under 400 ft: cleared internally. No draft, no comment period, no local hearing. Before July, each metro got its own review with about 30 days for public letters.
The company issues a press release
By then the decisions are made. Papillion, Nebraska found out when a reporter counted about 50 Amazon drone movements in an hour over a suburb whose council had never voted on any of it.
The only early warning is your own planning counter
A permit application at city hall, or a planning commission agenda item, is the first and often the last public signal. Fifteen states have sued the FAA over the national finding; the window for anyone else to challenge it closed September 26, 2026.
Full detail: How drone delivery approval works on the DroneXL tracker.
Who owns what
FederalThe FAA
- All airspace, flight paths, altitude
- Which companies may fly, and where
- Aircraft design, parachutes, in-flight noise
- Daily flight caps and hours in the air
- Whether any environmental review happens
Authority since 1958; restated by the FAA in 2018 and 2023. For a licensed air carrier, a second law also bars states from regulating its routes and services.
CityNorth Myrtle Beach
- Zoning: is a hub a permitted use, and where
- Site plan, building permit, conditional use permit and its conditions
- Ground hours, lighting, screening, traffic, noise at the property line
- Consent for delivery onto private property
- General nuisance, trespass, litter and privacy law, as long as it doesn't single out drones
StateSouth Carolina
- Whether towns may regulate drones at all: Act 150 of 2026 (S.C. Code 55-1-230(A)), in force January 1, 2027, bars local ordinances that conflict with the act or FAA rules, then says a municipality "may impose reasonable restrictions on the takeoff and landing sites and the operation of drones on or above public property." Whether "on or above public property" limits both halves of that sentence or only the second is a question the courts have not answered.
- Federal airspace: 55-1-210(B) says nothing in the act "shall supersede federal authority over airspace regulation." Altitude, routes and hours in the air stay with the FAA.
- Who pays when something falls: S.C. Code 55-3-60 makes the owner of an aircraft operated over the state "absolutely liable for injury to persons" caused by its flight or by "the dropping or falling of an object from an aircraft," negligent or not. A drone is an aircraft under federal law.
- No drone-specific privacy or trespass statute, before or after January 1: DroneXL's October 2 review of the code found none, with the voyeurism statute, 16-17-470, the closest general provision. Chapter 55-3 no longer carries the old dangerous-flying section, so there is no state rule on dropping objects over populated areas.
- Could write: hub siting, resident notification, flight-volume disclosure, data retention. Has not yet.
What a city can and cannot do
The test case is Singer v. City of Newton (2017): a federal judge struck Newton's altitude limit, overflight ban and local registration, and left land use alone.
Overflight is airspace. Richardson, Texas dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice and now points residents to their senators. Source
Altitude, overflight and local registration are the rules the court in Newton struck down.
Aircraft design and in-flight noise are FAA rules. Worth asking the operator about; not something a council can order.
Land use is the city's. Most towns have not yet written a drone facility into their zoning code at all.
A rule about what happens on the ground. Every operator already requires the customer to opt in.
The same rule the delivery truck lives under. A general rule applied to drones survives; a drone-only rule invites the challenge.
Northglenn, CO's draft ordinance (first reading Oct. 12, final vote set for Oct. 26) would require any applicant to disclose hours, altitude, noise, aircraft count and flight frequency, plus an incident plan with 24-hour written notice after any crash. Source
Castle Rock and Parker, CO froze hub applications in July 2026. Legal, but it only moves the pad one town over. Source
The record so far, document by document
Minor Planned Development District Amendment Z-26-22, Palmetto Coast Industrial Park. North Myrtle Beach has no drone ordinance. The city's legal department is researching whether it can write one on hours or noise, a spokesperson told the Sun News after the workshop. Until then, the record is one zoning application and what the city and Amazon have said about it.
The state law that arrives in JanuaryAct 150 of 2026 · signed May 15, 2026
The Drone Regulation and Public Safety Act passed the House 108-0 and the Senate 46-0 and takes effect January 1, 2027. Its preemption clause, S.C. Code 55-1-230(A), bars local ordinances that conflict with the act or with FAA regulations, and then lets a municipality "impose reasonable restrictions on the takeoff and landing sites." The paddock is one. Section 55-1-210(B) keeps the airspace federal. Until the act takes effect, the one drone-specific statute DroneXL found in the South Carolina code keeps drones away from prisons.
The applicationZ-26-22 · filed August 18, complete August 28, 2026
A request to amend the Parkway Group Planned Development District, the zoning that created the Palmetto Coast Industrial Park in May 2022, to add an approximately 13,627-square-foot fenced paddock on the paved service lot behind the fulfillment center at 8651 Water Tower Road. The staff report lists "drone launch, landing, and divert pads; turn stations; drone-storage containers" inside an eight-foot enclosure of 32-inch concrete Jersey barriers with metal posts and privacy mesh. It removes 24 parking spaces. "No new principal building, access drive, exterior lighting, antenna, tower, or rooftop equipment is proposed." The drawings, dated August 5, 2026, show six launch and landing pads and a divert pad, and label the site SSC3-PADDC, the acronym Amazon's FAA filings use for a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center.
The accessory-use determinationZoning Administrator · staff report
The city's zoning administrator found the drone operation "accessory to the approved fulfillment and distribution use." That reading is why the application is a minor amendment before the Planning Commission rather than a rezoning before the City Council, and why no council hearing is scheduled. The staff report found no concern that would preclude approval.
What approval would and would not doStaff report · October 6 and 7, 2026
The city's own words: approval "is limited to the proposed land-use and site-plan changes" and "does not authorize flight operations or replace any approval required by the Federal Aviation Administration." Amazon "is separately pursuing the federal authorization required for drone flight operations." Since the FAA signed a nationwide environmental finding for drone delivery on July 28, 2026, that federal step can happen against the national study with no draft, no comment period and no local hearing. The FAA's public index listed Amazon documents for Texas, Florida, Detroit, Kansas City, Omaha, Baton Rouge, Chicago and the older test sites on October 11, 2026, and none for South Carolina.
September 22: the motion that was withdrawnPlanning Commission · September 22, 2026
The September packet carried a ready-made approval motion. At the meeting, "an approval motion was withdrawn, and the Commission postponed the amendment" to allow more information and public engagement. The assistant planning director told WMBF the city wanted to workshop the idea and that the FAA governs the flying: "I think the city absolutely does have a say in where they would launch from."
October 6: staff ask for October 20Planning Commission · October 6, 2026
Staff's recommended motion was to postpone Z-26-22 until the October 20 meeting, and the report announced a public workshop for October 7. The commission's options, in the report's words: "approve, approve with modifications or conditions, disapprove, or postpone the minor amendment." A second Amazon item on the same agenda, Z-26-24 for building and site signs at the same address, was also recommended for postponement, with a request that the signs say North Myrtle Beach rather than Myrtle Beach.
October 7: the workshopPlanning Commission workshop · 1:30 p.m., City Hall
Discussion only; the agenda said no motion, vote or decision would be made. Amazon's representative told the room the plan calls for 12 drones, flights between 100 and 400 feet, a drop from about 13 feet into an 18-foot clear circle, single-family homes only, customers opting in, and an aircraft that never exceeds 68 decibels. On stopping overflights: "That is a matter of the FAA, not me." The same day the FAA told WPDE that "operators and local community leaders have primary responsibility" for addressing community concerns. The chairman told WPDE the city has no ordinances for drone operations and the decision "stays with the Planning Commission."
October 20: the votePlanning Commission regular meeting · 5 p.m., Council Chambers, 1018 2nd Avenue South
The city calendar lists a 9:15 a.m. workshop in the Planning and Development conference room and the 5 p.m. regular meeting. The agenda was not posted as of October 11. The commission can approve, approve with conditions, deny, or postpone again. A condition written into Z-26-22 binds the site plan afterward; whether a given condition survives the state preemption clause is the city attorney's question, and the best time to ask it is in public, before the vote.
Read the full text: Planning Commission agenda and staff report, October 6, 2026 (PDF).
What's still open for the city
Conditions on Z-26-22
The commission may approve "with modifications or conditions." Northglenn, Colorado's draft ordinance is the model for the disclosure list: hours on the pad, aircraft count, expected flight frequency, a local contact and complaint line, and written notice to the city within 24 hours of any crash. A flight-volume report every quarter costs Amazon little and tells the city whether the hub flies the 150 orders a day Amazon reported in Richardson or the 1,000 it is authorized for. Northglenn staff memo (PDF)
A takeoff-and-landing ordinance
Act 150 arrives January 1 with language that lets a municipality restrict drone takeoff and landing sites. The city's legal department is researching an ordinance on hours or noise. A rule aimed at the aircraft in flight is the kind the court in Singer v. Newton struck down; a rule on where and when a pad may operate, applied through zoning, is the kind the new state law names. The council can start that work now. Act 150 of 2026, full text
The noise record
Amazon's workshop slide says 65 and 68 decibels at the pad and 68 in a backyard during a delivery, with no distance and no metric. The FAA's noise report for the same aircraft, built on Amazon's own test-range measurements, puts the delivery hover at 92.1 dBA sound exposure level 25 feet from the drop and a cruise pass at 63.7 at 200 feet. Both sets belong in the city's file with their distances attached. The city has half the record until someone puts the FAA table next to the slide. The FAA figures, laid out
The file itself
The Z-26-22 application, the zoning administrator's accessory determination, and any correspondence between the city and Amazon about flight counts, routes or the workshop are public records under the South Carolina Freedom of Information Act, S.C. Code 30-4-10 and following. The city has ten working days to answer a request (30-4-30(C)). The time to ask is while the item is open. S.C. Code Title 30, Chapter 4
Before the vote
A checklist. Ticks are saved on this device only.
Once drones are flying
Don't consent, if you don't want deliveries
Every operator requires the customer to opt in. It is a personal choice, not a shield: Amazon told a Westborough, Massachusetts ballroom in September 2026 there is no opting out of overflight. Read more
Keep a log, then complain with dates and times
Date, time, altitude, duration, direction. What living under it sounds like: a Richardson, Texas resident counted 52 Amazon drones over her yard in a day, and the FAA's own Baton Rouge filing puts an Amazon delivery hover at 92 decibels measured 25 feet from the aircraft. After Richardson residents complained, Amazon raised its outbound altitude to 225 ft and moved routes over commercial land. Amazon left College Station after two years of noise complaints. Read more
Ask the operator the 15 questions
Weight, parachute, what happens after a collision, sound at 50/100/250 ft, how often one street is overflown, what the cameras record, who pays for damage, who gets the call when one comes down. Zipline answered in part; Amazon and Wing have not. Read more
Report what comes down
The Drone Delivery Tracker logs every hub, market and incident on the public record. Several rows exist because a resident sent photos. Read more
Who to contact
Federal: the FAA takes drone questions at 844-359-6982 and noise inquiries at faa.gov/noise/inquiries. Amazon's Prime Air line is 1-888-280-4331. None of these changes a decision; all of them create a record.
Have your say
Two minutes, anonymous. No name, no email, no address. Results are public, update live, and are feedback from people who chose to answer, not a scientific poll. Modeled on the independent Westborough, MA survey that reached 853 responses and three state legislators in six weeks, without the name and street it asked for. Atlantic Beach, Briarcliffe Acres and the north end of Myrtle Beach are inside Amazon's circle and have no vote on the pad; this is their microphone too.
Read the documents yourself
Every claim in this guide traces to one of these. If a document says something different from this page, the document is right and we want to know: send a correction.
North Myrtle Beach
Every US town
North Myrtle Beach has the document Richardson never wrote
I have covered Amazon's arrival in Richardson, Papillion, Westborough and now North Myrtle Beach this year. Richardson approved its pads in 2025 with ground hours attached and nothing about flight counts; by this April its council had dropped a rezoning threat on legal advice and was telling residents to call Washington. North Myrtle Beach is two weeks from the same signature, and my read is that the city is handling it better than any town I have watched: a motion withdrawn when the room was not ready, a workshop with Amazon in the chair answering questions, and a staff report that says in plain words what the vote does and does not authorize.
What it has not done yet is use the one page it owns. Amazon told the workshop that overflights are the FAA's problem. The FAA told WPDE they are Amazon's and the city's. Between those two answers is Z-26-22, and whatever is written into it on October 20 is the one land-use approval for this operation that a North Myrtle Beach official will sign. Hours on the pad, a flight-volume report, a local contact, 24-hour notice after a crash: I think those belong in the motion, and I think the city attorney should say in public, before the vote, which of them survive the state law that arrives in January.
None of this is an argument against drone delivery. Blood across the Waterway in four minutes earns its noise. A box of sunscreen over Barefoot, carried by an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute, has to earn it, and the people under it get a say. Zipline's P2 hovers at 300 feet, lowers the box on a tether and carries a parachute; that is the reference for doing this right, and the MK30 is not it. The commission does not need to share that view to attach conditions. Amazon is limited to 1,000 deliveries a day. Nothing in the city's file yet says how many it will fly.
Spotted a mistake? Here is how to get it fixed
Every fact in this guide is meant to be checkable against a document listed above. If something is wrong, out of date, or missing (a meeting moved, a permit decided, a number that does not match the filing), tell DroneXL and it gets corrected, with the change logged below.
- Use the correction form at the bottom of this page (jump to it). Pick "Correction," name the guide (North Myrtle Beach, SC), quote the sentence, and say what it should say. A link to the document that shows the correct fact gets it fixed fastest. The form can be sent anonymously.
- Or email [email protected] with "Correction: North Myrtle Beach guide" in the subject line.
- What happens next. The claim is checked against the primary document. A confirmed error is corrected on the page and noted in the "Updates" log below with the date; a material error also gets a correction note on the DroneXL corrections page. Readers who report an error are not named unless they ask to be.
City officials, operators and residents are all welcome to use this. Disagreement with DroneXL's take is not a correction, but it is welcome in the comments.
Updates to this guide
Spotted an error, or something that changed? Every fact on this page is meant to be checkable against the documents in the Sources tab. Corrections and updates: how to report an error or the correction form below (anonymous if you want), or email [email protected]. Fixes are logged in the Sources tab with the date.
This is reporting, not legal advice. DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Editorial standards · Corrections policy
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