Thirteen years after Jeff Bezos strode onto the set of CBS' "60 Minutes" and revealed Amazon's first delivery drone—predicting 30-minute drop-offs of airborne packages within the next four to five years—the company is still working to make good on that promise. This week, it took a significant step forward.

On Wednesday, Amazon announced plans to expand drone delivery to nearly 500 U.S. cities and towns by the end of this year. The company said the move represents a sixfold increase in its drone network footprint and will bring the service to tens of millions of customers.

The expansion follows years of struggle to get the project off the ground, along with widespread skepticism that the effort—however attractive—would ever amount to more than a limited side project. It also underscores how Amazon has kept investing in the program even as its broader delivery network continues to rely overwhelmingly on trucks, vans, and human drivers.

Where the service is heading

Amazon said drone deliveries will expand to the Chicago, Syracuse, Cleveland, and Atlanta areas, among other metro areas and towns. The company did not clarify how many deliveries it expects per day or how large its drone fleet will be in each location.

Almost any item weighing five pounds or less that fits inside a large shoebox is eligible for delivery, with customers ordering through the Amazon app. Delivery is free for Prime members who spend $50 or more; otherwise the fee is $2.99. Non-Prime members pay $4.99 per delivery.

Amazon's current drone operations include San Antonio, Texas; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Kansas City, Kansas; and eight other areas. According to the company, the drones depart from Amazon fulfillment sites and can deliver items in as little as 30 minutes.

Even in its existing markets, however, the service is relatively limited. The drones cannot fly beyond a roughly seven-mile radius, constraining their reach, and they operate primarily in suburban locations to avoid tall buildings and other tricky obstacles.

A fraction of Amazon's volume

Prime Air boss David Carbon said in a statement that Amazon has delivered hundreds of thousands of packages to customers by drone this year. Impressive as that figure may be, it is just a fraction of the nearly 20 million packages Amazon delivers every day in the U.S., according to market research firm ShipMatrix.

Several companies, including Amazon competitors such as Walmart, have also been trying to crack drone delivery to quicken shipping speeds and rely less on human drivers. Their goals have been sidetracked by regulatory hurdles, costly technology, and complaints from local residents.

"It's still clearly a work in progress, but they have a vision that this is one of the best ways to get things to people in less than 45 minutes," said Josh Lowitz, co-founder of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, a firm that studies Amazon Prime members.

Lowitz, who visited Amazon's Prime Air drone lab in Seattle this week, said the company delivers primarily in suburban areas because it needs a 10-foot radius to deliver safely.

"They're working on battery technology and sound technology, trying to make it better and better. If the delivery range goes from seven miles to 15 miles, they could reach people in rural areas," Lowitz said.

Regulatory challenges

While Amazon is arguably best positioned to make drone delivery happen, given its hundreds of fulfillment centers and technology resources, it has faced a wave of problems in meeting its ambition. Gaining certification from the Federal Aviation Administration has been a key issue, since the FAA's standard methods of evaluating aircraft are based on human-piloted aircraft.

Flying and landing in people's yards was unprecedented before Amazon and others began testing their drones, forcing the company to build its standards from scratch. Amazon also initially approached the project from a technological perspective and did not staff enough people who knew how to navigate the regulatory system, former employees told Fortune.

In 2020, Amazon replaced the visionary founder of the project, Gur Kimchi, with former Boeing executive David Carbon. While the move showed Amazon taking the regulatory side of the project earnestly, it initially sparked a culture clash, the former employees said. Many of the original Prime Air employees left, stalling the project as Carbon rebuilt talent to work on robotics, autonomy, and other technical aspects.

The growing pains did not stop there. In the fall of 2025, two Amazon delivery drones collided with a crane in Arizona, causing damage and a fire. This July, one of the company's drones crashed into a garden while attempting a delivery in Darlington, UK.

Amazon also left two sites—in Lockeford, Calif., and College Station, Texas—after initially testing its drones there. Some residents complained about a loud buzz from the aircraft, though Amazon has said the noise is no louder than an idling delivery truck. An Amazon spokeswoman said each generation of Prime Air technology has brought significant sound improvements.

Competing efforts are advancing in parallel. Walmart, together with Alphabet's Wing, has been expanding its program, recently adding seven new delivery markets with a plan to reach more than 40 million American customers by 2027. An FAA rule that would make it easier to deliver packages via drone on longer flights beyond an operator's line of sight awaits approval. In recent regulatory filings, Amazon said GPS signals degrade at lower altitudes for its drones, and the company has asked regulators for permission to use a special wireless frequency in some drone tests.

Human drivers vs. drones

Aside from drones being a coveted Bezos pet project, the decision to press on may come down to maintaining Amazon's edge on speed—and the expansion comes as New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is supporting a bill that would force Amazon and other companies to make their delivery drivers employees instead of subcontractors.

Speed has been a bedrock for Amazon since it pioneered two-day shipping, and the company has crept closer, year by year, to the reality of almost-instant delivery. It has done this by opening centers equipped to move popular products and everyday essentials quickly through its system. Amazon has at least 65 so-called sub-same-day centers throughout the U.S. and is also operating out of small locations in inner cities to reach customers faster, according to logistics consultant MWPVL International. Some of these locations have refrigerators inside for perishable items, MWPVL said.

The company has sharpened its efficiency with AI, robotics, and a strategy of staying as close to customers as possible. For fast deliveries, it also leans on on-demand drivers with their own vehicles, who can turn around deliveries more easily than the regular Amazon vans that follow less-scattered routes.

Amazon subsidizes its vast delivery system with the fees it collects from third-party sellers as well as its more than 200 million Prime members, who each pay $139 a year. The money collected from seller fees accounts for nearly a quarter of the company's overall revenue. Those funds, along with Amazon's virtually unmatched logistics expertise and increasing demand, have enabled it to spread throughout the U.S., including into corners of rural America.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.