An Amazon delivery drone hovers over a backyard, lets go of a cardboard box and drops it dead center into an above-ground swimming pool. The short clip, posted to a popular Reddit community for mildly annoying moments under the plain title “amazon drone delivery,” climbed to number 11 on Reddit’s front page this weekend. The drone then flies off as if the job went perfectly.
The twist is in Amazon’s own rulebook. In its guide to how Prime Air works, the company singles out this exact scenario: “a swimming pool looks like a flat surface on satellite images, but isn’t a suitable delivery point.”
Accident or setup?
The thread quickly split into two camps. The larger one argued the customer chose the pool. “When you opt to do the drone delivery, you’re actually taken to an overhead view to select the location you want it dropped,” one commenter wrote. Others pointed out that the person filming was already standing in the yard with a phone ready.
The other camp was less sure. One user noted that an above-ground pool might not show up on an old satellite image, so a delivery point set on open grass could later end up under water. Another said a first-time customer might simply not expect the drone to drop the package from a height. Badiyaa could not see the account’s delivery settings, so there is no way to say from the clip alone which version is right.
How Prime Air picks a spot
Amazon’s explainer lays out the process step by step:
- Drone delivery is offered at checkout in eligible areas for items of 5 pounds or less, from a selection of more than 60,000 products.
- The customer selects and confirms a preferred delivery spot at their address, such as a driveway or yard, and does not have to confirm it again on later orders.
- Prime Air built a delivery map by first marking obstacle-free “delivery zones,” then adding “delivery points” to each eligible address.
- At the point, the MK30 drone descends to about 13 feet, checks that the area is clear of pets, cars and people, and releases the package.
That 13-foot figure explains the splash. The MK30 does not land; it lets go from roughly the height of a single-story roof. Earlier versions of the service asked customers to lay out a QR code marker in the yard. The MK30 system dropped that requirement and now relies on digital maps instead, which is exactly why a pool that appeared after the satellite photo was taken would matter.
Where Prime Air stands
Amazon’s drone service launched in 2022 in Lockeford, California, and College Station, Texas. By February 2026 it had made roughly 16,000 deliveries, with operations in Texas, Michigan, Arizona, Florida and Kansas, and in May 2026 it began flights from Richmond, Texas, in the Houston area. It has had setbacks too: in October 2025 two MK30 drones struck a construction crane in Arizona, pausing the service while federal regulators looked into it. In December 2025 Amazon ended commercial drone deliveries in Italy.
The economics remain the open question. In 2022 a single trial delivery cost at least $484, according to figures summarized in the service’s public history, with a target of $63 by 2025. At 16,000 deliveries over a little more than three years, Prime Air has averaged roughly 13 to 14 drops a day across all its sites combined.
Badiyaa has covered other machines meeting real life, from a Waymo robotaxi stuck sideways on a pastor’s first ride in Atlanta to drones helping track a tagged python in the Everglades.
Amazon says customers can update their delivery location or report an issue in the app at any time.
Further reading
Image: Roksenhorn, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. How we work.
