FLYING Magazine
Low-altitude airspace is about to get busier as food delivery platform DoorDash throws its full weight behind drone delivery.
The delivery platform unveiled an in-house drone delivery program, DoorDash Air, that it said will be operated by drones it is developing itself. DoorDash since 2024 has used drones from partners Wing, Flytrex, and Manna to offer the service in parts of Virginia, North Carolina, Texas, and Georgia.
On Wednesday, though, the company said it obtained FAA Part 135 air carrier authorization that will allow DoorDash Air to own the entire “end-to-end” ecosystem, from the operating system to the drones themselves.
“We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere,” said Harrison Shih, who will lead DoorDash Air, in the company’s news release. “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.”
Shih is a senior director of DoorDash Labs, the company’s robotics and autonomy division that last year unveiled a sidewalk delivery robot called Dot. DoorDash on Wednesday gave a behind- the-scenes peek at the team’s progress developing its flagship delivery drone, which does not yet have an official name or certification timeline.
The company said the majority of the drone’s components are built in the U.S., adding that it will complement the “short- and long-range designs our partners are scaling.”
DoorDash said the uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) would handle longer-range suburban or remote deliveries. That would free up its drivers for shorter trips that are closer to where merchants are concentrated, as well as for large orders or deliveries that require navigating an apartment complex.
The company said some locations participating in its early offerings have seen their DoorDash order volume spike by about 30 percent in the nine weeks after they launched. It said more than 20 percent of total orders on the platform in 2025 traveled 3-to-5 five miles but took nearly 25 percent more time than shorter deliveries, mainly due to issues finding a driver.
Though DoorDash was the first food delivery app to trial drone delivery in the U.S., Uber Eats and Grubhub are exploring similar services.
More Than a Drone
DoorDash said it is developing not only drones but the ecosystem around them, including a full hardware stack, order processing and loading, dispatch, routing algorithms, and real-time inventory reconciliation. Crucially, it said the aircraft will be complemented by “universal handoff systems” for drive-throughs, rooftops, and other points where store associates pass orders to the drone.
“It will take the marriage of technology and operations to make the promise of [autonomous vehicles] come true,” DoorDash cofounder and CEO Tony Xu wrote in a post on X.
DoorDash’s Dot robot and third-party delivery drivers are plugged into the company’s Autonomous Delivery Platform, which it says is designed to match orders with the most efficient delivery method in real time. The same system will soon coordinate drone deliveries as well.
“This is the operating system for how things move through the physical world,” Steven Tang, co-founder and chief product officer of DoorDash, wrote on X.
DoorDash said it would share more about the drones and how they will integrate into its broader delivery system later this year. But the company is already hiring flight test personnel, first-person-view drone pilots, ground support operators, and a variety of engineers for roles in San Francisco.
Drone Delivery’s Explosion
DoorDash’s first U.S. drone delivery partnership was with Wing, part of Google parent Alphabet. The partners launched in Virginia and have since expanded the app-based service to Charlotte, North Carolina, Dallas-Fort Worth, and most recently Atlanta.
Wing said in June that it has facilitated “well over 1 million commercial deliveries.” In partnership with Walmart, it aims to offer drone delivery out of 270 store locations by 2027. DoorDash has tapped into some of that scale by integrating its app with the service. But with its network of merchants and customers, the company has the potential to take it to new heights.
“Wing has proven that drone delivery is an important part of the delivery ecosystem and we are excited for continued investment in the space,” said Wing in a statement shared with FLYING. “We have a strong and established partnership with DoorDash, and we continue to grow together. We look forward to continuing to expand our network of service, leveraging our technology and experience to bring drone delivery to more communities.”
DoorDash said Wednesday that it has completed tens of thousands of deliveries of cold medicine, hot coffee and meals, and other items. It estimated that last year, the average drone delivery time was 25 minutes.
The FAA estimates that it has registered more than 800,000 drones and certificated more than 480,000 remote pilots.
What It Means
DoorDash was required to complete a rigorous, five-stage certification process before the FAA issued Part 135 authorization. Still, drone delivery and its rapid growth have prompted safety concerns from pilots, including those represented by groups such as the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) and Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
The FAA is responsible for the certification, production approval, and continued airworthiness of delivery drones, just as the agency is for crewed aircraft. It issues certificates, exemptions, waivers, and operations specifications and conducts National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews for drone package delivery proposals.
The five-phase Part 135 certification process for drone operators covers the airworthiness of the drone, maintenance programs, safety procedures, and other aspects. It comprises pre-application and formal application phases followed by assessments of aircraft design and performance, culminating in issuance of the certificate and operations specifications.
The FAA issues four types of Part 135 certificates based on the type of services planned and where the operator wants to fly. It is unclear which DoorDash obtained. But standard Part 135 operators face no limits on the size or scope of their operations. DoorDash is just the eighth drone operator to obtain Part 135 authorization, with Wing securing the first in 2019.
Drone operators must also comply with state, local, and NEPA requirements and inform the local community about their activities.
Drones operated by Part 107 remote pilots face key limitations, the biggest being that they cannot fly beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of a human. However, DoorDash will likely pursue a waiver or exemption to obtain those privileges as Wing and others have done. Tang implied as much in his post on X, titled “Beyond the Line of Sight.”
That paradigm could soon change and expand drone delivery even further. If passed, the FAA’s proposed Part 108 rule would do away with BVLOS waivers. Instead of a traditional airman certificate, drone operators could procure a Part 108 license or certification that permits BVLOS operations broadly under a new set of rules.
The key enabler of Part 108 will be the ability for drones and crewed aircraft to detect and avoid one another, but pilots and the drone industry disagree on how that might work. UAVs eventually will rely on uncrewed traffic management (UTM) systems that are designed to manage drone traffic. However, that technology remains under evaluation by the FAA.
Pilots represented by groups such as ALPA have taken issue with several provisions of Part 108, which is reportedly close to being finalized.