Drones over Portland: what Amazon filed, who decides, and what you can still do
A plain-language guide for North Portland and the neighbors under the circle, before Amazon's first meeting with city planners. One land-use filing, no FAA document, a launch quarter of early 2027, and a state law that keeps drone rules out of city hall. The sky belongs to the FAA. The doorstep is yours.
The short version
Amazon has asked Portland for a pre-application conference on a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center at its warehouse at 1001 N. Schmeer Road, the former Portland Meadows racetrack beside Interstate 5 in Delta Park. The Portland Business Journal found the filing in September. Amazon says it plans to fly in early 2027. A 7.5-mile circle around that address covers most of North and Northeast Portland, Hayden Island, St. Johns and downtown Vancouver, Washington.
No FAA document for Portland exists. No council vote is scheduled, and under Oregon law none can touch the flying: ORS 837.385 puts drone regulation in Salem. What Portland holds is the ground, the permit, and the questions it asks when Amazon sits down with its planners this month.
Every block is marked Every US town or Portland.
If you remember three things
One filing, no FAA document. A pre-application conference request at the city's permitting office. Nothing on the FAA's public list.
Oregon took drone rules away from cities in 2013. ORS 837.385. Portland can decide the building and the permit, never the flight.
Your consent is required before a drone delivers to your home. It is not required for one to fly over, and the trespass claim ORS 837.380 creates does not apply to a drone flying commercially under FAA authorization.
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 namedNo Oregon entry on the FAA's drone environmental review index as of October 11, 2026, and no Oregon site in the DroneXL tracker. Wing's nearest plan is the Seattle and Puget Sound announcement of October 5 for 2027, in Washington.
- 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
Pre-application filedAsked Portland Permitting & Development in September for a pre-application conference on a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center at its 1001 N. Schmeer Road warehouse, with flights planned for early 2027. No FAA document for the site on the public index as of October 11, 2026. Amazon has flown test flights at Pendleton, Oregon since 2019.
- 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 namedNo Oregon site on the FAA's review index as of October 11, 2026. Its nearest filing is a Seattle draft assessment for up to 75 sites, in review since September 2025.
- 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 these guides, Portland knows the address. Amazon's filing names its own warehouse at 1001 N. Schmeer Road, the former Portland Meadows racetrack between Interstate 5 and the Portland International Raceway in Delta Park. Amazon's hubs elsewhere serve a radius of about 7.5 miles. Drawn from Schmeer Road, that circle takes in Kenton, Arbor Lodge, Piedmont, St. Johns, Hayden Island, the Columbia Slough, downtown Portland and, across the river, downtown Vancouver, Washington. Which of those streets see drones depends on routes the FAA approves and Amazon has not published. The filing describes a building.
The map is centered on the Amazon warehouse at 1001 N. Schmeer Road, using the DroneXL tracker's placement of the site; the dashed ring is the 7.5-mile radius Amazon's existing hubs serve. Distances are straight-line from that point. Every other marker is a landmark or neighborhood placed from well-known coordinates and marked approximate. No flight routes are public, so the ring shows who could be served, not where the drones will fly.
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.
CityPortland
- 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
StateOregon
- Whether cities may regulate drones at all: Oregon said no in 2013. ORS 837.385 vests the authority "solely in the Legislative Assembly" and says a local government "may not enact an ordinance or resolution that regulates the ownership or operation of unmanned aircraft systems." Zoning, a building permit and the conditions on a facility are decisions about land, not about operating an aircraft; where that line sits for a drone center is a question Portland's lawyers will have to answer, and no Oregon court has yet
- Trespass: ORS 837.380 lets a property owner sue an operator that flies over after being told not to, with treble damages. Subsection (3) takes that away when the drone "is operated for commercial purposes in compliance with authorization granted by the Federal Aviation Administration." A privacy suit under ORS 30.831 is still allowed
- Harassment: ORS 837.370 makes it a Class B violation to fly a drone over private premises "to intentionally, knowingly or recklessly harass or annoy the owner or occupant"
- Dropping things: ORS 837.085 bars dropping "any missile or other article or substance from any aircraft in flight" without a permit from the Director of the Oregon Department of Aviation, except over flying grounds or open water. DroneXL found no permit request or grant in the FAA's drone review index, the news coverage or its own state table as of October 11, 2026, and did not ask the Oregon Department of Aviation.
- Could write: hub siting, resident notification, data retention, who pays for damage, and an exception to 837.385 for delivery facilities. Has done: ORS 837.387 (2023) lets a city regulate takeoff and landing in its own parks; the 2025 session amended 837.374 on reckless interference with aircraft (2025 c.604). Nothing in chapter 837 mentions package delivery
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
Portland has no drone delivery ordinance, and under ORS 837.385 it may not write one about the flying. What exists is a paper trail: two FAA documents for a test range 200 miles away, a state objection that lost, one pre-application request at the city's permitting office, a lawsuit, and the first neighborhood questions. Newest last.
The test range in Eastern OregonFAA, November 9, 2022 and August 2025
Amazon has flown in Oregon for years, at the Pendleton UAS Range at Eastern Oregon Regional Airport, about 200 miles east of Portland. The FAA's 2022 assessment covered up to 48 test flights a day, daylight only, up to five days a week, with the older MK27-2 aircraft, and said Prime Air was "not expected to be conducting commercial delivery flights" from the range. A written re-evaluation in August 2025 swapped in the MK30 ("The drone weighs 77.9 lbs.", 83.2 lb at takeoff with a 5 lb package) and added operator training, with no new review. In December 2024 two MK30s crashed in rain at Pendleton; a sensor issue was later identified and Amazon paused deliveries nationwide in early 2025. Pendleton is a test range, not a hub, and nothing in its documents covers Portland.
Oregon's objection to the national reviewJoint comment letter, January 23, 2026
Attorney General Dan Rayfield's office signed a letter from 17 attorneys general and Harris County, Texas telling the FAA that its draft national assessment for drone package delivery was "a paper exercise, largely devoid of reliable qualitative or quantitative analyses." They asked for a full environmental impact statement and, at minimum, a site-specific assessment for every hub.
The national findingFAA, July 28, 2026
The FAA signed the national assessment and its finding of no impact. A hub that fits it, under 1,150 deliveries a day and at least 600 feet from homes at that volume, is checked internally with no site document and no public comment. Oregon asked for a bigger process and did not get one. If the FAA decides Schmeer Road fits, the only public step Portland gets is the one its own permitting office runs.
The pre-application conference requestPortland Permitting & Development, September 2026
Amazon asked the city for a pre-application conference on a Prime Air Drone Delivery Center at its sub-same-day fulfillment center at 1001 N. Schmeer Road, with service planned for early 2027. The Portland Business Journal reported it first; spokesperson Farah Jad told the paper: "We are currently working with local officials and exploring opportunities." A pre-application conference approves nothing. In Portland's words, "the primary purpose of the conference is to provide information to the applicant." It is required for Type III and IV land-use reviews and optional for everything else; the city notifies neighborhood associations within 1,000 feet, posts the notice 10 days ahead, lets neighbors attend, and mails the applicant a summary report within three weeks, which the public can buy for a fee from Land Use Services. The case number has not been published, and DroneXL could not pull the file from PortlandMaps on October 11, 2026; the same records show Amazon leased two more Portland warehouses in August, at 4444 S.E. 27th Avenue and 2405 N. Albina Avenue, for ground delivery without drones.
Oregon goes to courtPetition for review, Second Circuit, September 28, 2026
Oregon is one of 15 states that, with Harris County, Texas, asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to "review and set aside" the FAA's July 28 finding. Nothing in the petition slows the Portland filing: a hub can be checked against the national document while the case is pending, and no court has ruled.
The neighborhoods start askingNorth Peninsula Review, September 26; OPB, October 8, 2026
Terrence Moses, a longtime Kenton community leader, told the North Peninsula Review, "It's very concerning this is even being allowed to happen." The Oregon Bird Alliance's statewide conservation lead, Joe Liebezeit, said of the natural areas near the site, "We're absolutely following this." On October 8 the Portland Business Journal's Sara Edwards told OPB that members of the Piedmont Neighborhood Association had raised safety, noise and local-retail concerns, and that Amazon was expected to meet city officials in October. No city official has spoken on the record in any coverage DroneXL found as of October 11, 2026.
Read the full text: DroneXL: the Portland filing, the FAA record and the airspace (September 19, 2026).
What's still open for the city
The review type
Everything turns on which land-use path the drone center takes. A Type III review means a hearing and conditions; a building permit for structures on industrial land may mean neither. Ask Permitting & Development which one applies to Schmeer Road, in writing, before the conference. The answer is the single most useful fact a resident can get this month. How a pre-application conference works
Conditions on the ground
Where a permit is required, Portland can set ground hours, lighting, screening, traffic and a setback for the launch pad from the nearest homes in Kenton and Bridgeton. The FAA's own national document uses 600 feet at full volume. It cannot set an altitude, a route or a drone curfew, and under ORS 837.385 it cannot write a drone ordinance at all. How approval works
The file
A Northglenn-style disclosure ordinance is off the table in Oregon, but asking is not. The pre-application summary report is a public record available for a fee, and the planner on the case can be asked for the operating documents Amazon brought: noise modeling, the delivery area map, the FAA correspondence, and whether the site will get its own environmental assessment or ride the national one. Request the records
Salem
The statute that stops Portland also names who can act: the Legislative Assembly. Siting standards, notice to residents before a hub opens, data retention, who pays when a package lands in a yard, and a delivery-facility exception to 837.385 are all state questions. Oregon's next long session opens in January 2027, the quarter Amazon wants to fly. ORS chapter 837
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. Neither changes a decision; both create a record. Portland City Council takes written testimony only through the agenda page at portland.gov/council/agenda or by mail to the Council Clerk, 1221 SW 4th Avenue, Room 130.
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.
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.
Portland
Every US town
Portland found out the right way, and it still has almost nothing to decide
Most towns in these guides learned about their drone hub from a press release or a reporter counting aircraft over a cul-de-sac. Portland learned from its own permit counter, months before the first flight Amazon says it plans, which is the best start any city has had this year. My read is that the head start is worth less here than it would be almost anywhere else. Oregon's legislature took drone regulation away from its cities in 2013, and ORS 837.380 goes further than most states by shielding an FAA-authorized delivery drone from the trespass suit it gives everyone else. Belvedere could write consent and hours into its code. Portland cannot write the word drone into an ordinance at all.
What Portland has is a building on industrial land and a meeting about it. I think the city should use that meeting for the one thing it is good for: getting Amazon's operating documents onto a public table. The noise modeling, the delivery map, whether Schmeer Road rides the national finding or gets its own assessment, and what happens when one comes down in the Columbia Slough. Amazon has let two DroneXL deadlines pass without answering a single written safety question about an 83-pound aircraft with no parachute that drops packages from 13 feet; Zipline, with a 55-pound aircraft, a parachute and a tethered drop, answered in part. Portland's planners can ask what I could not get answered, and they should ask before they sign anything about a parking lot.
I want the version of this that earns its noise: a defibrillator across the slough in minutes, medication to a Hayden Island apartment the bus does not serve. A toothpaste run over Kenton at 9 p.m. has to earn it too, and the people under it get a say. In Oregon that say lives in Salem, with Rep. Nelson and Sen. Frederick, in the session that opens the same quarter Amazon plans to fly. The state's attorney general has already said on the record that the federal review is a paper exercise. The Legislature can now decide whether Oregon's own rules are.
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 (Portland, OR), 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: Portland 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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