Amazon Prime Air MK30

The MK30 is the third generation of Amazon's delivery aircraft and the first one the company built for neighbourhoods rather than for test ranges. Shown publicly in late 2023 and carrying customer parcels from November 2024, it replaced the MK27-2 with a machine that Amazon says flies twice as far and is close to half as loud — the noise coming down mainly from redesigned propellers, because a delivery drone that neighbours can hear all day is a drone that gets legislated out of the sky. Mechanically it is a hybrid: six motors lift it vertically off the pad, then it transitions to wing-borne flight for the cruise, up to 400 feet above ground and up to 73 mph. Regulatory filings put the maximum take-off weight at 83.2 lb (37.7 kg) — of which the customer's parcel may be no more than 5 lb (2.3 kg). That payload ceiling is the single most important number in the system: Amazon states it covers roughly 60% of what its customers buy most often, and everything heavier stays on a van. Range is the second constraint. A Prime Air site works a radius of about 7.5 miles, an operating area of some 175 square miles, and the drone descends to a target in the customer's yard without landing, releasing the package from low altitude. A perception system with machine-learning classifiers is meant to spot people, animals, obstacles and other aircraft; the airframe was water-tested so it can work in light rain. What makes the MK30 unusual is not the airframe but the paperwork behind it. Prime Air holds an FAA Part 135 air-carrier certificate — the framework used by commercial airlines — and flies beyond visual line of sight. Even so, every new site needs its own environmental review and its own authorisation, which is why a fleet that has flown hundreds of thousands of packages still operates from a number of locations that can be counted on two hands.

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8/25/2026 · About Amazon

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