Amazon to resume drone delivery following crash in Arizona
Amazon will restart its drone delivery service in Arizona beginning Friday as two federal agencies continue to investigate a crash that occurred earlier this week.
Amazon suspended operations in the West Valley of the Phoenix Metro area — currently its only commercial market — following a crash Wednesday. Two of the company’s Prime Air delivery drones collided with the boom of a crane near its same-day site in Tolleson, Arizona, which sent them crashing to the ground.
Amazon has been delivering packages, weighing up to five pounds, to customers via its Prime Air drone service in the West Valley of Phoenix since November 2024.
Amazon spokesperson Terrence Clark said the company will continue to support “ongoing reviews by relevant agencies.” The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration announced Thursday that investigations into the crash are underway.
“Safety is our top priority, and we’ve completed our own internal review of this incident and are confident that there wasn’t an issue with the drones or the technology that supports them,” Clark said in an emailed statement. “Nonetheless, we’ve introduced additional processes like enhanced visual landscape inspections to better monitor for moving obstructions such as cranes.”
The program has faced several setbacks over the years, including the departure of key executives, as the company pushes toward its goal of using drones to deliver 500 million packages per year by the end of the decade.
Amazon halted testing of its drones after a mid-air collision involving two of its models in Oregon in December 2024. At the time, Amazon said it would suspend drone deliveries in College Station, Texas and Arizona pending a software update to its drone fleet. Amazon no longer has operations in College Station.
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Amazon has also scored a win or two, including receiving approval from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration to fly its delivery drones longer distances. That approval in May 2024 removed one regulatory hurdle, allowing Amazon to expand its Prime Air service. Amazon has previously said it planned to expand Prime Air delivery services in Texas in Richardson, San Antonio, and Waco, and across the country with sites planned for Detroit and Kansas City.
Kirsten Korosec is a reporter and editor who has covered the future of transportation from EVs and autonomous vehicles to urban air mobility and in-car tech for more than a decade. She is currently the transportation editor at TechCrunch and co-host of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast. She is also co-founder and co-host of the podcast, “The Autonocast.” She previously wrote for Fortune, The Verge, Bloomberg, MIT Technology Review and CBS Interactive.
You can contact or verify outreach from Kirsten by emailing kirsten.korosec@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at kkorosec.07 on Signal.
