DoorDash becomes the eighth operator in the U.S. to earn Part 135 air carrier certification, authorizing commercial drone delivery
Chelsea Guglielmino / Getty Images
DoorDash announced on Wednesday that it has earned Part 135 air carrier certification from the Federal Aviation Administration and is launching DoorDash Air, an in-house drone delivery program developed by its robotics and autonomy unit, DoorDash Labs.
With the certification, DoorDash joins a small group of U.S. operators to have cleared that regulatory bar, which involves a five-stage evaluation of aircraft airworthiness, maintenance programs, and safety procedures, the company said. The authorization allows DoorDash to operate as an air carrier and offer commercial drone deliveries in the United States.
DoorDash Air will include the company's own custom-built aircraft as well as the broader ground infrastructure needed to support drone delivery at scale, including real-time inventory systems and handoff mechanisms for drive-throughs, rooftops, and merchant back doors, the company said. DoorDash said its drone is designed and built in the United States, with the majority of components made domestically.
The company did not provide a timeline for when its drones would begin commercial operations, according to TechCrunch. Before autonomous flights over longer distances can begin, DoorDash will need a separate FAA approval for Beyond Visual Line of Sight operations, a certification that Amazon $AMZN, Alphabet $GOOGL's Wing, and Zipline have received in recent years.
Despite launching its own program, DoorDash will maintain its existing delivery partnerships with Wing and Flytrex, the company said. The Wing relationship dates to 2022, when the two companies teamed up on drone delivery in Australia, with the arrangement growing to include parts of the Dallas-Fort Worth market by 2024, according to TechCrunch.
"We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere. We're building the full stack to make that possible from the ground infrastructure to the drone itself, and the handoff systems that make it work together seamlessly," Harrison Shih, head of DoorDash Air, said in a statement.
DoorDash cited internal data indicating that drone deliveries covering less than five miles have come in at under 25 minutes on average. It also pointed to internal data showing that some merchant locations participating in earlier drone partner pilots saw order volume grow roughly 30%, with that increase sustained over the nine weeks following a pilot launch.
DoorDash Air is one component of a broader multi-modal delivery network that also includes human couriers, the Dot sidewalk robot, and third-party autonomous delivery partners. The company said its Autonomous Delivery Platform software determines in real time which delivery method to dispatch for a given order.
DoorDash posted record membership signups and a new high for monthly active users in the first quarter of 2026, though revenue came in below analyst forecasts. The company said at the time that certain planned investments had been shifted to the back half of 2026.
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