SAN FRANCISCO (Diya TV) — DoorDash launched DoorDash Air on Wednesday after receiving federal certification to operate its own commercial drone-delivery service in the United States, expanding the company’s autonomous delivery strategy beyond partnerships with outside operators.
The Federal Aviation Administration granted DoorDash Labs a Part 135 air carrier certificate, making DoorDash the eighth U.S. drone operator to receive the authorization, according to the company.
Part 135 certification allows an approved operator to transport another party’s property for compensation using drones beyond the pilot’s visual line of sight. The FAA requires applicants to complete a multistage review covering aircraft safety, maintenance procedures, operational systems and personnel qualifications.
DoorDash said the certification allows the company to operate as an air carrier and eventually integrate its own drones directly into its delivery network. However, the company has not announced the first markets where DoorDash Air will operate or provided a firm date for deliveries using its internally developed aircraft.
DoorDash plans to disclose additional details about the aircraft and the program’s rollout later this year.
The company has already facilitated tens of thousands of drone deliveries through partnerships with Alphabet-owned Wing and Flytrex. DoorDash said those partnerships will continue as it develops its first-party drone operation.
DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang described the new program as an effort to move autonomous technology beyond laboratory demonstrations and into everyday commercial use.
“People come here because they want to solve real problems and see their work show up in the real world within days, not stuck in R&D hell watching a demo that never leaves the lab,” Tang wrote in an article announcing the initiative.
Tang said the company approached drone delivery by identifying problems facing customers and merchants rather than beginning with the technology itself. He argued that an aircraft alone has limited value unless it connects efficiently with restaurants, retailers and customers.
DoorDash developed the program through DoorDash Labs, its internal robotics and autonomy division. The same team created Dot, the company’s electric ground-delivery robot.
The company said it is designing and assembling its drone in the United States, with most components sourced domestically. DoorDash has not disclosed the aircraft’s appearance, payload capacity, range or the number of drones it has produced.
Harrison Shih, head of DoorDash Air, said the company wants to build a system capable of serving different types of merchants rather than developing only an aircraft.
“We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere,” Shih said. “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.”
DoorDash said the more difficult challenge involves coordinating the infrastructure surrounding each flight. That includes confirming store inventory, loading orders, identifying appropriate launch and landing areas and transferring packages from restaurants or stores to the aircraft.
The company is developing systems that could support pickups from locations such as rooftops, drive-through areas and rear merchant entrances.
DoorDash also plans to integrate the service with its Autonomous Delivery Platform, which determines how individual orders should be completed. The system can assign an order to a human Dasher, a ground robot, a drone or an outside autonomous-delivery partner based on factors such as distance, order size and delivery conditions.
The company said drones may be particularly useful for orders traveling between three and five miles. More than 20% of DoorDash orders in 2025 fell within that distance, according to company data, but those deliveries took nearly 25% longer on average than shorter trips.
DoorDash said assigning some medium-distance orders to drones could allow human couriers to focus on shorter deliveries or orders that autonomous systems cannot handle. Those include large orders and deliveries requiring someone to enter an apartment building or navigate other complex locations.
The company emphasized that Dashers will continue to complete the vast majority of its millions of daily deliveries.
DoorDash reported that drone orders completed through its partner programs took an average of approximately 25 minutes in 2025. It also said some participating businesses experienced an order-volume increase of roughly 30% after drone delivery became available. Those figures came from DoorDash and have not been independently verified across its broader merchant network.
DoorDash began testing drone delivery through Wing in Australia in 2022 before introducing a U.S. pilot in Christiansburg, Virginia, in 2024. The companies later expanded their partnership to additional areas, including parts of North Carolina, Texas and Georgia.
DoorDash also partnered with Flytrex to offer drone delivery in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
The company now joins a small group of federally certified drone-delivery operators that includes Wing, UPS Flight Forward, Amazon Prime Air, Zipline, Causey Aviation Unmanned, DroneUp and Drone Express.
Although DoorDash has officially launched its in-house program, its own aircraft are not yet broadly delivering customer orders. The certification provides the regulatory foundation for commercial operations, while the locations, aircraft specifications and wider deployment schedule remain forthcoming.
