Zipline wants to blanket Phoenix and Tucson with drone deliveries running up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week, including holidays, under a sweeping proposal now before federal regulators. The drone delivery company is seeking Federal Aviation Administration approval to build out a network capable of handling as many as 130,000 package deliveries per day across the two Arizona metro areas.
The FAA published a draft environmental assessment for the proposal this month, laying out just how large Zipline's ambitions are, as first detailed by Dronelife. The agency is reviewing the potential environmental effects of expanding Zipline's commercial drone network into Phoenix and Tucson, a step required before it can decide whether to approve the expansion. Zipline already holds an FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate and an exemption allowing certain beyond-visual-line-of-sight operations, but the company still needs amendments to its FAA operating specifications and other approvals before it can begin the proposed Arizona service, according to Dronelife's report.
Under the draft plan, Zipline could establish up to 65 charging locations and 1,300 package dropboxes in each metropolitan area, for a combined total of 130 charging sites and 2,600 dropboxes across Phoenix and Tucson. Each charging location could support as many as 1,000 deliveries per day at maximum capacity, per the same Dronelife account. That infrastructure would be placed at retail stores, warehouses, and other partner facilities, all of which must sit in areas consistent with local zoning and land use requirements.
Why the Numbers Look So Big
The 130,000-deliveries-per-day figure sounds enormous, but the FAA assessment frames it as a ceiling, not a forecast — the proposed capacity represents maximum operating capacity rather than expected daily delivery volumes, with actual activity depending on customer demand, weather, and other operating conditions, the report notes. Because each Zipline delivery involves three separate flight segments — from charging location to pickup, pickup to customer, and customer back to the charging location — the assessment identifies up to 390,000 individual flight segments per day across both metro areas at the proposal's outer limit.
Zipline expects most deliveries to happen during daytime and evening hours rather than overnight. The FAA assessment estimates that roughly 95 percent of flights would occur between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m., with the remaining 5 percent occurring between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m. depending on demand, according to Dronelife's coverage of the draft document. The environmental review also examines potential noise, wildlife, land use, and visual impacts tied to the expanded operation.
Platform 2 Drones and the Arizona Buildout
Zipline plans to use its Platform 2 delivery aircraft for the Arizona service. That aircraft has a maximum takeoff weight of approximately 63 pounds and can carry packages weighing up to eight pounds, figures that line up with what the company told reporters earlier this year. Back in April, Zipline said it was working with the FAA and cities throughout the Phoenix metro area and hoped to operate Valleywide, according to Axios.
At that time, the company said its drones could potentially transport up to eight pounds in the Valley and have a range of up to 10 miles, though they would not necessarily fly the full radius at first. Zipline hoped to be operational in the Phoenix area by the middle of the year, Axios reported. Company spokesperson Shane Conley told reporters Zipline had made 2.3 million drone deliveries globally with no incidents of property damage or human injury.
A Pattern Beyond Arizona
Zipline's Arizona push follows a broader national expansion. The company was already operating in the Dallas area and northwest Arkansas as of the April report, with plans to expand into Houston this year, per the same Axios account. The FAA first authorized Zipline, a certificated Part 135 operator, to deliver commercial packages around Salt Lake City and Bentonville using drones that fly beyond the operator's visual line of sight back in September 2023, according to an FAA announcement.
Zipline has also built a major retail partnership: Walmart reached a multiyear agreement with the company to add 300 drone delivery sites across the United States, according to Supermarket News. That Walmart-Zipline partnership began in 2021, and the program has since completed more than 2 million deliveries. Separately, Zipline has completed more than 500,000 deliveries since 2016, most of them in Rwanda and Ghana, as reported by CNET, which notes the company's second-generation drones carry payloads of 6 to 8 pounds. Zipline and Uber have also announced a partnership goal of reaching 1 million drone deliveries a day by the end of 2029, according to IEEE Spectrum.
Drone Delivery Fights Elsewhere
Large-scale drone delivery proposals have drawn pushback in other parts of the country. Amazon's proposed Westborough, Massachusetts operation — involving a fleet of 83-pound delivery drones flying up to 1,000 times a day across more than a dozen cities and towns within a 7.5-mile radius — has faced community opposition and questions about local zoning and environmental oversight, according to the Boston Globe. Whether Arizona residents raise similar concerns about the Zipline proposal remains to be seen.
How to Weigh In Before the Comment Window Closes
The FAA's environmental assessment, part of the review required under the National Environmental Policy Act, is now open for public comment. The draft environmental assessment itself lists December 7, 2026 as the deadline, while the FAA's environmental review webpage lists December 9 as the deadline — the two dates conflict, and it is not clear from available materials which one governs. Comments may be submitted to [email protected] using the subject line “Zipline Arizona Draft EA,” per Dronelife's report on the filing.
The article was authored by Miriam McNabb, whom Dronelife describes as editor-in-chief and CEO of Jobfordrones. Whether the FAA ultimately approves Zipline's proposed Arizona buildout — and at what scale — will depend on the outcome of the environmental review now underway.
