Delivery drones for Amazon will soon be taking to the skies in parts of Shawnee as part of a program launching across the U.S.
On Monday, Shawnee city staff alerted the Shawnee City Council to Amazon’s plans to deploy Prime Air drones in the area in next few weeks.
The MK30 drones will deliver packages weighing less than 5 pounds out of two Amazon locations nearby. They will cover about two-thirds of Shawnee, according to city documents.
The discussion was for informational purposes only, to raise awareness about the program and answer any questions the city council had.
Amazon has operating drones for years
In 2013, Amazon announced the Prime Air program. It currently has three active operations for drone delivery, in Pendleton, Oregon; Tolleson, Arizona; and College Station, Texas. It has logged 4,000 flight hours or about 16,000 flights, said Deputy City Manager Colin Duffy.
In 2025, the company announced it wanted to open seven additional sites, including two in the Kansas City area. The two chosen sites for the program will be at 6925 Riverview Ave. in Kansas City, Kansas, and 4001 East 149th St. in Kansas City, Missouri.
The company expects about around 21 deliveries an hour, split between KCK and northeast Johnson County.
The Federal Aviation Administration regulates the program. The drones will be deployed from the fulfillment centers between sunrise and sunset and will fly in inclement weather, Duffy said.
“Even if it’s light rain or medium winds, you might still expect to see these flying around the skies of Shawnee,” Duffy said.
The drone flying radius is 7 1/2 miles from the fulfillment center, or about 15 minutes of flight time, Duffy said.
Prime Air must respect no-fly zones, such as airports and hospitals, as well buffer zones with restricted access.
It will be used for packages under 5 pounds
During the meeting, Duffy gave an example of someone running out of coffee, who would then log on to Amazon and see if it what they want is deliverable.
“You hop on Amazon, you look up a package that is less than five pounds, and they determine whether your home is in their delivery area,” he said. “If it is, you pay an additional $5 and then within one hour, Amazon will deliver that package and drop it right in front of your either house or in your backyard.”
The drones are autonomous, fly on predetermined routes and include a detect-and-avoid technology.
“If they were to run into something else, ideally, they would stop before hitting it,” Duffy said.
Amazon has conducted a sound study on the drone and determined the sound they make is about 70 decibels, similar to a vacuum or traffic noise, Duffy said.
“So far, there have been no complaints pertaining to sound from the three locations that they do have … Most of the issues that they did occur were at the paddock, just because you have continual flights in and out in KCK,” he said.
He added: “The sounds that a resident would experience here would only be about a minute at most, as this drone is hovering above, identifying the location area and then, increasing their elevation back to fly back to the paddock. So again, light noise that we would expect in Shawnee.”
Shawnee Public Safety is on board
During the past two months, the city’s emergency management workers from the Shawnee Fire Department and Police Department have been working with Amazon to get an idea of their role in Prime Air.
In that time, Matt Epperson, deputy chief of Emergency Management for the Shawnee Fire Department, said they’ve been able to talk with them about airspace maps, no-fly zones and what happens if an event is going on in the city that’s also in a drone’s route.
“We’re setting up meetings right now to review … (what happens when) we do have events or other things going on, or if we have any critical infrastructure that we have concerns, that we don’t want flights going over all the time. We can have those conversations directly with them,” he said.
In the event of an emergency, like a drone crashing or malfunctioning, Epperson said the FAA and Amazon’s rapid response team would respond to it. In addition, Shawnee’s emergency services also has a plan in place if it takes place in a public setting.
“If there would be a crash, they are treated no different than any airplane crash, but law enforcement already has those procedures in place, so if there’s an issue where it’s in the street, tying up traffic, as long as we make it safe, Amazon has said, ‘Yeah, go ahead and get it out of there and open things up,'” he said.
In the event of an emergency where Shawnee or a neighboring city is using drones as emergency responders, Epperson said they’re still working through the logistics to make sure the drones aren’t in conflict with each other.
“How do we coordinate with them if they’re going out on these flights and we either have an incident that we need to fly on or we’re flying for a public safety event like Old Shawnee Days, stuff like that, how do we make sure to de-conflict that airspace so that we don’t have drones crashing into each other? That’s still that communication piece that we’re working through right now,” he said.
“It’s amazing where we’re headed with technology”
Shawnee City councilmembers like Kurt Knappen and Angela Stiens expressed their excitement with the project.
“It’s amazing where we’re headed with technology,” Knappen said.
Stiens added: “I think these are really cool. I’ve seen them in Texas, and they just deliver things and they drop them down, and it’s amazing.”
When asked how the city will help with making people aware of the program, Duffy said they’re still looking into it.
“We tried to reach out to other communities to find out what they did, and, really, there hadn’t been any community education. So that’s something we’ll look into, just awareness what they are more than anything,” he said.
Amazon is looking to launch the program within the next month, Epperson said.
“They are looking at potentially starting this service as early as December. So, you know, just in time for the holidays,” he said.
Other Shawnee news: Free outdoor gym opens at Garrett Park in western Shawnee
