Drones over Richardson: what the city signed, and what you can still do
A plain-language guide for residents of the North Texas city that approved an Amazon drone hub and then found out what it had signed. The drones are flying. The sky belongs to the FAA, the hours belong to the zoning, and Austin decides the rest.
The short version
Richardson, about 120,000 people on the Dallas-Collin county line, allowed Amazon's drone hub at 3051 Research Drive on a 4–3 council vote in June 2025. Deliveries began in December. Within weeks residents under the departure corridor were logging a drone every few minutes, an MK30 hit an apartment building in February, and in April the city decided undoing the zoning carried legal risks it would not take.
The drones will keep flying. Texas bars cities from regulating drone operation, so what is left is narrow: the hours in the zoning, the complaint record, the next permit, and a Legislature that convenes in January 2027. This guide is for Richardson, for Plano, Garland, Murphy and Sachse under the same 7.5-mile circle, and for the 500 towns Amazon says are next.
Every block is marked Every US town or Richardson.
If you remember three things
The hub is zoned and the city will not undo it. The council reviewed its options in April 2026 and found the zoning legal and the risk of rezoning too high.
Texas took the operating rules away from cities in 2017. Government Code 423.009 bars any city ordinance on drone operation. Land use and ground hours are what Richardson kept.
The drones moved once, after complaints. After January complaints, Amazon raised outbound altitude to an average of 225 ft and shifted some departures over commercial land.
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)
Operating nearby, for WalmartFlies for Walmart from the Supercenter at 5302 N. Garland Ave. in Garland since late 2024; its six-mile reach covers part of Richardson, and the city's FAQ lists Walmart drones over the city. The FAA's April 2025 Dallas-Fort Worth document allows up to 75 nests across ten counties, Dallas and Collin among them, and names no city.
- 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
Operating from RichardsonFlies from the STX8 hub at 3051 Research Drive since early December 2025 under an FAA decision signed Feb. 5, 2026 that allows up to 1,000 flights a day, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. The city's zoning cuts the ground hours to 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Amazon told the council on March 9 it flies 150 to 250 a day.
- 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
Dallas-Fort Worth, not RichardsonFlies for Walmart from Mesquite, McKinney and Greenville, each more than 10 miles from Richardson, under an FAA decision for up to 75 sites in the metro that names no city. Zipline has announced no Richardson site and the FAA document names none, as of Oct. 11, 2026 (checked: the Zipline DFW decision and the DroneXL tracker).
- Aircraft
- P2 Zip, 55 lb, carries a parachute
- Delivery
- Hovers at about 300 ft; a tethered "droid" lowers the package
- Reach
- About 10 miles
Flytrex
Little Elm and WylieFlies food orders in Little Elm and Wylie and shares airspace with Wing there under an FAA traffic-management trial. Wylie's base is about 8 miles east of Richardson City Hall. DroneXL has no record of Flytrex service in Richardson.
Read moreHow a drone would actually reach your street
Richardson does not have to guess where the drones come from. Amazon's hub is the STX8 fulfillment center at 3051 Research Drive, in north Richardson near the President George Bush Turnpike. Every delivery inside 7.5 miles starts and ends there, which is why the streets just south of it, Woods of Spring Creek and Creek Hollow Estates, hear a drone every few minutes while a house at the far end of the circle hears one drop one box. Wing's drones come from a Walmart lot in Garland and reach part of the city from the east. Zipline is in the metro but not here.
Distances are straight-line from Richardson City Hall, 411 W. Arapaho Road. The hub and crash points come from the DroneXL tracker's site and incident records; the crash point is approximate. Reference points are city centers. Amazon's hub sits 3.1 miles north of City Hall, so every Richardson address is inside its 7.5-mile circle, and so are most of Plano, Murphy and Sachse and parts of Garland, Addison and north Dallas. The neighborhoods nearest the hub, among them Woods of Spring Creek and Creek Hollow Estates, sit under the departure corridor.
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.
CityRichardson
- 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
StateTexas
- Whether cities may regulate drones at all: Texas said no in 2017. Government Code 423.009(b) bars a city from adopting or enforcing any ordinance on the operation of an unmanned aircraft, with exceptions for special events, the city's own drones, and areas near city facilities. Zoning and ground use remain the city's.
- Privacy: Government Code 423.003 makes it a Class C misdemeanor to use a drone to capture an image of a person or private property with intent to conduct surveillance; 423.006 lets an owner or tenant sue for $5,000 per episode. Images taken for navigation are not surveillance.
- A dropped package: Transportation Code chapter 24, the state's aircraft operation chapter, has no provision on dropping objects from an aircraft, and the Penal Code has not been amended for it.
- Could write: hub siting and setbacks from homes, notice to residents before a hub opens, a complaint line that answers, data retention, who pays when a package lands in a pool. Bill filing for the 2027 session opens Nov. 9, 2026.
- Has not yet: the 2025 drone bill that reached the House calendar, HB 3662, was about flights over schools and died in May; a DroneXL web search of 89th-session bills touching Chapter 423, run October 11, 2026, found no 2025 bill on delivery hubs or on 423.009; a Texas Legislature Online bill search was not run.
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
Planned development amendment ZF 25-04 for 3051 Research Drive, and what followed. Richardson has no drone ordinance. What it has is a zoning case it approved in June 2025, an FAA decision it had no vote on, and ten months of council meetings learning the difference. Newest last.
Plan Commission recommends the hub, 3–2March 2025 · case ZF 25-04
Amazon asked to add a commercial drone delivery hub as an accessory use to the planned development covering its fulfillment center at 3051 Research Drive, rezoned in 2020. Senior planner Derek Peters told the commission the city could regulate ground operations and takeoff and landing times, not drones in flight. The commission voted 3–2 to recommend approval, Commissioners Michael Keller and Sebrena Bohnsack against. Amazon's Sam Bailey: "We view this as a local collaboration with the community."
Council approves it 4–3, with hoursJune 9, 2025 · case ZF 25-04
Amazon asked for civil-twilight hours, 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset, and four launch pads. The council approved the amendment 4–3 with ground hours of 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.: Hutchenrider, Dorian, Corcoran and Shamsul for; Justice, Barrios and Mayor Omar against. Justice had proposed tying the hours to the noise ordinance; Amazon said customers would not be home. The city received six letters against and one for before the hearing. The vote, the hours and the case number are from Community Impact's June 10, 2025 report; a council-watcher's recap of the March 9, 2026 meeting on marksteger.com gives the ordinance number as PD Ordinance 4362, which DroneXL has not confirmed against the city's ordinance text.
FAA draft review, comment period, decisionDraft EA, comments to January 2026 · FONSI/ROD Feb. 5, 2026
The FAA reviewed 22 Texas delivery centers in one document. For Richardson it describes STX8 as "a former Amazon delivery station that was repurposed as a fulfillment center." The decision allows up to 1,000 delivery flights per operating day from each of the 22 sites, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week, with the MK30 at a maximum takeoff weight of 83.2 lb carrying up to 5 lb, flying en route between about 180 and 377 ft. Its noise model puts a drone overflight at 50 feet at about 74.2 decibels, which it compares to a leaf blower at the same distance, and the delivery hover at 25 feet at DNL 52 dB. The comment period on the draft closed in January 2026, after the drones were already flying.
Complaints arrive; the city says it cannot act on most of themJan. 5 and Feb. 2, 2026 council meetings
Stephanie Puri of Woods of Spring Creek told the council she had logged 122 drones over her home in one ten-hour day and asked for a noise study. HOA president Scott Bratcher: "This is very disruptive." Residents asked for routes over Renner Road instead of backyards. City Manager Don Magner said the city had received dozens of complaints since December, could not regulate most of what they raised, and was sending residents to the FAA and Amazon while staff met with Amazon's engineers.
The crashFeb. 4, 2026 · Routh Creek Parkway
An MK30 struck the side of an apartment building around 5 p.m. and fell to the sidewalk, smoking, propellers still turning. Richardson firefighters said the drone never caught fire; nobody was hurt. Amazon apologized, said it was investigating, and later told NBC 5 the cause was GPS interference near tall buildings and that it removed buildings of similar height from its delivery list.
Amazon's changes, and the council's reactionMarch 9, 2026 council meeting
Amazon's Sam Bailey said outbound altitude had been raised to an average of 225 ft in February, some departures now head east over commercial land before Creek Hollow Estates, and overflight of the greenway east of Woodcreek Church was reduced. Making the aircraft quieter would need a hardware change that is not coming soon. Routing over major roads was turned down: safety with other operators, energy, and fewer reachable customers. The site flies 150 to 250 flights a day against the FAA's 1,000. Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider: "I would like to know real data." Mayor Omar asked Amazon to shave an hour off each end of the day. Council member Corcoran said of his June vote: "there's absolutely no way I vote yes." Magner suggested bringing back the city attorney on what would count as a taking.
The city will not rezoneApril 6 executive session · announced April 14, 2026
After legal advice in closed session, Magner said the council "found the zoning to be legal" and judged the legal risk of rezoning too high for it to be a "viable or prudent option." He pointed residents to the FAA, which regulates flight patterns, frequency and altitude, and to federal elected officials, and said he hoped the clarity would keep Amazon refining its program. Bratcher told the council the drones remain a "nightmare" and that neighbors were considering asking the county for a property tax value reduction.
Protest, national television, and the countJune 13 to Oct. 1, 2026
Residents from at least four neighborhoods protested outside the Research Drive hub on June 13. Amazon said it had "increased flight altitudes and adjusted flight paths." On Sept. 18 Puri's tracker logged 52 overflights, which The New York Times published Sept. 21; Amazon told the paper fewer than 1% of inquiries about the program concern noise. The Drone Warriors, as the residents now call themselves, told NBC's TODAY in late September they want the drones higher. The city's drone FAQ now names the FAA, Amazon and Walmart as the places to complain.
Read the full text: FAA FONSI and Record of Decision, Amazon Prime Air in Texas, Feb. 5, 2026 (PDF).
What's still open for the city
The hours it already holds
The 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. condition in the June 2025 zoning is the one rule Richardson wrote, and staff said at the time the city can regulate ground operations and takeoff and landing times. Logging a flight before 7 or after 8 and reporting it to code enforcement tests whether the condition is enforced. Amazon says the site has never flown before 7 a.m. City of Richardson: Express a Concern
The next permit
The approved case covers four launch pads. More pads, more floor area or a second site means a new planned development amendment, and that hearing is where a council attaches conditions: a named local contact, a public flight count, written notice to the city within 24 hours of any crash. Northglenn, Colorado drafted that list first. Northglenn staff memo (PDF)
The data
Council members asked Amazon for a noise study in March; no study appears in the council record or the city's drone FAQ as of October 11. A city-commissioned sound measurement at the property line and under the corridor, published, is a staffing decision the council can make on its own. It is also the record a state bill would be written from. Community Impact, March 10, 2026
Austin
Section 423.009 is the Legislature's to amend. A council resolution asking Richardson's four House members and three senators for siting setbacks, resident notice and a complaint standard, sent before bill filing opens Nov. 9, 2026, costs nothing. The rezoning lever is gone; this one is not. Texas Government Code 423.009
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
Richardson is split among four House districts (33, 70, 102 and 112) and three Senate districts (2, 8 and 16) after the 2021 maps; the Collin County corner falls in Districts 33, 70 and 8. Not sure which is yours: the Texas Legislature's Who Represents Me address lookup settles it. 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.
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. Richardson has had the drones for ten months and no count of its own; this is one.
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.
Richardson
Every US town
Richardson is the town Amazon's next 500 should study
I have watched Richardson from the first council vote through the Times story, and my read is that the city did not do anything wrong by the rules it had. It held a hearing, cut the hours, approved a hub that its own staff said it could only regulate on the ground, and then found out what 150 departures a day sound like from a pool in Woods of Spring Creek. Joe Corcoran saying in March that there is no way he votes yes today is the most honest sentence any council member has said about drone delivery this year.
The lever that worked was not the zoning. It was a few hundred residents complaining until Amazon raised its own altitude to 225 feet, which it then told Baton Rouge was the FAA's call. That tells me the fix is in the company's hands and that it pulls it under pressure. What it has not pulled is the aircraft: an 83-pound MK30 with no parachute, flying 13 feet over a yard to drop a box that could have come in a van. Zipline carries a parachute, lowers the package on a tether from 300 feet, and has answered my safety questions in part. Amazon has not.
None of this is an argument against drone delivery. A prescription or a defibrillator across Richardson in ten minutes earns its noise. A phone charger at 7:45 p.m. has to earn it, and the people under the corridor get a say. Richardson gave up its rezoning card in April, on advice I think was right. What it still has is a council that can measure the noise itself, a permit it can condition next time, and seven legislators who can file a bill from Nov. 9. Texas took the operating rules away from cities in 2017; Texas can write the siting rules in 2027.
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 (Richardson, TX), 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: Richardson 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
Corrections, tips and reports
Read by a person, checked before it changes a row · anonymous if you wantStraight to the editor. Nothing publishes on a tip alone.
- 01We confirm firstA document, a second source or our own reporting, before a row changes or a story runs.
- 02You are credited if you wantOr not at all. Anonymous means we never see who you are.
- 03Corrections are loggedEvery fix shows in the row's source and update date, so the record stays honest.
- 04Spam does not reach usA bot check and a few quiet traps keep the inbox to real people.
Comments
Public discussion. For corrections and tips, including anonymous ones, use the form aboveComments load when you scroll here.