Amazon parked one of its MK30 delivery drones on Front Street Plaza in downtown Tracy, California on the morning of August 29, in the middle of the Street Dreams Car Show. Two days earlier the company had told the Los Angeles Times that Prime Air would start flying from its Tracy warehouse within a month.
That month is nearly up. No drones are delivering in Tracy yet, and the federal government has published nothing about the site: no environmental assessment, no finding, no comment period.
Lockeford sits 35 miles (56 kilometers) away in the same county, and it is the only California entry in the FAA’s drone delivery environmental records. When Amazon flew there in 2022, the agency wrote a full assessment of the operation and put it online. DroneXL covered the Tracy launch plan two weeks ago, working from the same interview. The federal record has not moved since.
Amazon Runs the Same Community Preview Before Every Launch
Amazon does this before every Prime Air launch. A static MK30 goes on display somewhere public, staffed by people who answer questions about noise, privacy and delivery times. Tracy got a car show booth. Hazel Park got a community center, Tinley Park a convention hall…