Drones over Waco: what's flying, who decides, and what you can still do
Amazon has flown packages over Waco since November 5, 2025. The FAA signed off on 1,000 flights a day. Texas law voids any city rule on how the drones operate. Here is what is left for the city, and for you.
The short version
Waco is not waiting for drone delivery. It has had it since November 5, 2025, when Amazon began flying its MK30 from beside the fulfillment center at 2000 Exchange Parkway on the west side of the city. The FAA's February 5, 2026 decision allows up to 1,000 flights a day from that site, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., over a 7.5-mile circle that takes in Woodway, Hewitt, Robinson and most of Waco. Thirteen days after launch an MK30 cut a customer's internet cable; in September 2026 another set down on a lawn.
No Waco council vote, hearing or permit on any of this appears on the record DroneXL searched. Texas took the question away from cities in 2017. This guide explains what that leaves the city, and you.
Every block is marked Every US town or Waco.
If you remember three things
The drones are already here. Flying since Nov 5, 2025 from 2000 Exchange Parkway, under an FAA decision that approves up to 1,000 flights a day.
The city cannot write a drone rule. Texas Gov't Code 423.009 voids any city ordinance on drone operation. Land use and complaints are what remain.
Your consent is required before a drone drops a package at your home. It is not required for one to fly over, and Texas does not change that.
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's Texas authorizations cover Dallas-Fort Worth and Greater Houston. No Waco or McLennan County site appears on the FAA's environmental review index or in Wing's Walmart announcements as of Oct 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
Operating since Nov 5, 2025Flies the MK30 from beside its fulfillment center at 2000 Exchange Parkway (hub code AUS3). The FAA's Feb 5, 2026 Texas decision allows up to 1,000 flights a day there, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Waco is one of the 11 locations Amazon listed as operating in August 2026.
- 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's Texas draft assessment, posted Sept 11, 2026, covers Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Amarillo and El Paso. Waco is not in it. Zipline flies for Walmart in Dallas-Fort Worth and the Houston area.
- 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
There is nothing hypothetical about the route. Amazon's drones take off from a pad beside the AUS3 fulfillment center at 2000 Exchange Parkway, in the Texas Central Industrial Park off Highway 6, climb to between roughly 180 and 377 feet, cruise to the customer's address, descend to about 13 feet, release the package and fly back. The FAA's Texas assessment says the nearest neighborhood is 0.57 miles south of the site and that 193,128 people live inside the 7.5-mile circle it drew around it. Amazon told KWTX in August 2025 it planned 12 drones for Waco; in September 2026 it told the same station that customers within about 8 miles can order items of 5 pounds or less for delivery in under an hour.
The black dot is Waco City Hall, 300 Austin Avenue, and the dashed ring is drawn from there for scale. Amazon's actual 7.5-mile service circle is centered on the hub at 2000 Exchange Parkway, 5.1 miles to the southwest, so it reaches all of Woodway and Hewitt and stops short of Bellmead and Lacy Lakeview. Hub coordinates are from the FAA's Texas filing as recorded in the DroneXL tracker; the November 2025 incident point is approximate; the September 2026 landing point is from the DroneXL report; town points are approximate town centers. Distances are straight-line from the hub.
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.
CityWaco
- 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. Gov't Code 423.009 (2017) bars a city from any ordinance "regarding the operation of an unmanned aircraft," and makes one that tries "void and unenforceable," with exceptions only for special events, the city's own drones and city-owned infrastructure with FAA sign-off
- Privacy: Gov't 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 the owner sue for $5,000 per episode of images, $10,000 if they are distributed
- Dropping objects: Transportation Code chapter 24, the aircraft chapter, has no section on dropping anything from an aircraft (checked Oct 11, 2026), and DroneXL's state drop-law table lists none for Texas. Amazon's drop from 13 feet is governed by the FAA here; damage on the ground is ordinary civil liability
- Could write: hub siting, resident notification, data retention, who pays for a cut cable or a package in a pool, and it could narrow 423.009 itself. Chapter 423 as current to Jan 1, 2026 has none of that
- Texas did not join the 15 states that sued the FAA on Sept 28, 2026 over the national drone delivery finding. Harris County did, on its own
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
Waco has no drone delivery ordinance and, under Texas law, cannot write one about the flying. What exists instead is a state statute, an FAA environmental file, two Amazon events and two incidents. DroneXL searched waco-texas.com, the City Council and Plan Commission meeting pages and local news through Oct 11, 2026 and found no council vote, hearing, zoning case or permit on Prime Air. Newest item last.
The state takes drone rules away from citiesGov't Code 423.009 · H.B. 1643 · effective Sept 1, 2017
Subsection (b): a political subdivision "may not adopt or enforce any ordinance, order, or other similar measure" regarding the operation of an unmanned aircraft. Subsection (d): one that does is "void and unenforceable." The exceptions in (c) are special events, the city's own drone use, and drones near city-owned facilities, the last only with FAA authorization and a public hearing first. That leaves Waco's council no drone-operation ordinance it could lawfully adopt, and a Belvedere-style delivery chapter would not survive here. Zoning for the hub itself, consent on the ground and general nuisance law are not rules about operation, and they remain the city's.
Amazon shows the drone to WacoAug 4, 2025 · Waco Convention Center
A community meet-and-greet, reported by KWBU and KWTX. Christina Carter, Amazon's drone operations manager for Texas, said the MK30 is about 5 feet across, carries under 5 pounds and makes 40% less sound than the model flown in College Station. KWTX reported 12 drones planned and a launch site off Exchange Parkway; KWBU reported about 30 jobs and no launch date. No city official is quoted in either story.
The FAA's draft assessment opens for commentAug 15 to Oct 1, 2025
The draft environmental assessment for 22 Amazon delivery centers in Texas, AUS3 at 2000 Exchange Parkway among them, was posted August 15, 2025 with a 30-day comment period to September 13, later extended to October 1. That was the one public comment step. The final assessment says AUS3 is zoned Light Industrial (M-2), "intended to provide for a wide variety of nuisance-free industrial uses," with the nearest residential neighborhood 0.57 miles south.
Deliveries beginNov 5, 2025
Amazon announced the service live in Waco, its fourth active US market, two days after Pontiac, Michigan. Items up to 5 pounds, delivery in about an hour, $4.99 for Prime members and $9.99 for others at launch; by September 2026 KWTX reported it free for Prime members on orders of $50 or more, $2.99 under that, and $4.99 for non-members. KWTX's first-delivery story quoted a customer whose matcha order landed in her yard.
An MK30 cuts an internet cableNov 18, 2025, about 12:45 p.m.
Climbing out after a delivery, a propeller caught a residential internet line and severed it; the motors shut down and the aircraft came down on its own, CNBC reported from video it reviewed. The FAA told Reuters: "The FAA is investigating." Amazon called it a "safe contingent landing," said there were no injuries, and paid for the repair. The NTSB said it was aware and did not open its own probe. The FAA has published no finding since.
The FAA signs the Texas decisionFeb 5, 2026 · FONSI/ROD
Joseph Hemler, for the FAA's Flight Standards Service, signed the Finding of No Significant Impact and Record of Decision covering 22 Texas delivery centers. Each may fly up to 1,000 delivery flights per operating day, seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m., about 365,000 flights a year, en route at roughly 180 to 377 feet and never above 400, dropping from about 13 feet. The MK30 is listed at about 78 pounds empty, 83.2 at takeoff, 5 pounds of payload. On noise, the assessment puts an overflight at 50 feet at "approximately 74.2 decibels," against a leaf blower at the same distance at 73 to 77. This decision is public; Amazon's operating authorization that rests on it is not.
A year in: a complaint on file, a drone on a lawnSept 21 and 22, 2026
On September 21 a Waco worker posted photos of MK30 N328PA, an Amazon aircraft on the FAA registry, resting on the grass outside his workplace with its landing wheels out; Amazon sent a truck and has not said what triggered the landing. The next evening KWTX ran a one-year check-in: one resident said the noise did not bother him, another called it "an annoying buzz," and a third had filed formal complaints with the City of Waco and the FAA. The story carried no response from the city. Amazon spokesperson Jack Stelzner said noise reduction is a primary engineering focus.
What the City of Waco has on fileSearched through Oct 11, 2026
No City Council agenda item, Plan Commission case, zoning change or public hearing on Prime Air turned up on waco-texas.com, the council meeting pages or in local coverage. The hub sits in M-2 zoning on Amazon's own property, which is consistent with Amazon's statement elsewhere that about 80% of its hubs are approved administratively. That rests on web searches of waco-texas.com, the Plan Commission meeting pages, KWTX, KWBU and the Tribune-Herald; the city's PrimeGov agenda portal could not be searched directly and the Tribune-Herald archive is paywalled. Whether a site plan or building permit was issued for the drone pad is a Development Services records request away.
Read the full text: FAA Finding of No Significant Impact and Record of Decision, Amazon Prime Air in Texas, Feb 5, 2026 (PDF).
What's still open for the city
The land-use file
423.009 is about operation. It does not touch zoning, site plans or building permits. The pad at AUS3 sits in M-2 zoning on Amazon's land, so the first hub needed no hearing; a second pad, a new building or a hub anywhere else in Waco would run through Development Services. Ask the city to post whatever permit exists for the current pad and to treat any expansion as a public item. Waco Planning Services
Disclosure, by request
The city cannot order Amazon to fly a certain way. It can ask, in writing and in public, for what Northglenn, Colorado requires of applicants: hours, altitudes, routes, flight counts, aircraft count, and a commitment to notify the city within 24 hours of any landing off the pad. Two Waco landings reached the public through CNBC and Facebook, not through the city. Northglenn staff memo (PDF)
The complaint record
At least one Waco resident has filed with the city and the FAA. The city can log drone complaints as their own category in the MyWaco portal, count them, and publish the count. A number is what moved Amazon in Richardson, where it raised outbound altitude to 225 feet after residents complained. MyWaco portal
Austin
Everything a Texas city cannot do, the Legislature can: hub siting, notification before launch, data retention, liability for a cut cable, or a narrower 423.009. Nothing of the kind is in Chapter 423 as of Jan 1, 2026. The next regular session opens January 12, 2027. Texas also stayed out of the 15-state suit over the FAA's national finding; Harris County joined alone. The 15-state suit
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 takes drone delivery complaints and opt-out requests at 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. Waco has had Amazon drones overhead since November 2025, so unlike most towns on this tracker you are answering from experience. 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.
Waco
Every US town
Waco got the drones first and the conversation never
I have watched Belvedere write rules for a drone that does not exist and Westborough fill a ballroom for one that has not launched. Waco got neither. Amazon held a meet-and-greet in August 2025, the FAA took comments on a 22-hub document that, I would guess, most people in McLennan County never heard of, and on November 5 the packages started flying. Thirteen days later one of the drones cut a customer's internet line. The first time most of Waco learned what a city can and cannot do about any of this was, I suspect, never, because the honest answer in Texas is almost nothing, and nobody put that on an agenda.
My read is that 423.009 is not the villain here. A state that stops 1,200 cities from writing 1,200 altitude rules is doing the FAA's job for it, and the FAA's job is the right place for the flying. What the statute did not do, and what Austin has not done in the nine years since, is write the other half: who tells a town before launch, how many landings off the pad get reported and to whom, who pays for the cable. Richardson's answer to its residents was to call Washington. Waco's residents should call Austin too, and the senator has an office on Austin Avenue.
I think the MK30 is the wrong aircraft to be running 1,000 flights a day over 193,000 people: about 80 pounds, no parachute, dropping from 13 feet, with two Waco landings in ten months that the public learned about from CNBC and a Facebook post. Zipline's P2 shows how to do this with a parachute and a tether and no drop at all, and it answered DroneXL's safety questions in writing. Amazon has not. Until it does, the record above is what Waco has, and the survey below is the only vote the city gets.
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 (Waco, 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: Waco 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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