(VIDEO) DoorDash Wins FAA Approval and Launches DoorDash Air, Its Own In-House Drone Delivery Business

DoorDash is building its own drone delivery business, the company announced Wednesday, after securing federal approval that allows it to operate commercial drone deliveries independently for the first time rather than relying solely on outside partners.

The food and grocery delivery giant unveiled the new venture, called DoorDash Air, after receiving a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The certification legally permits DoorDash to operate a commercial drone delivery service within the United States and grants the company the ability to fly its drones “beyond visual line of sight,” according to FAA documentation, a designation that only a handful of drone operators nationwide have previously secured.

The new program was developed within DoorDash Labs, the company’s internal robotics and autonomy research division, which will eventually integrate the drone service directly into DoorDash’s consumer delivery app. According to the company, DoorDash Air makes it the eighth drone operator in the United States to receive Part 135 approval, placing it in the same regulatory tier as companies including Amazon’s Prime Air, Alphabet-owned Wing and Zipline, all of which have built out commercial drone delivery operations in recent years.

DoorDash confirmed it is building its own aircraft as part of the effort, along with the broader ground infrastructure needed to support drone operations. A company spokesperson described the scope of the undertaking in a statement, saying, “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.”

Despite the certification, the company has been careful to temper expectations about how quickly its drones will begin appearing in customers’ orders. DoorDash did not provide a detailed timeline for full commercial deployment, though a company spokesperson said the service is expected to launch in the fall, with additional details planned for release at the company’s annual product event in September. Any early rollout is expected to begin with limited pilot programs in which drones fly short distances while remaining within visual range of a human operator, ahead of any broader expansion using the beyond-visual-line-of-sight capability DoorDash has now secured.

The company said the drones being developed for DoorDash Air use components primarily sourced from the United States. According to figures the company has previously shared, its drone deliveries under existing partnership programs have been able to complete trips under five miles in an average of less than 25 minutes, a speed advantage the company has cited as one of the central benefits of expanding its aerial delivery capacity.

DoorDash is not abandoning its existing drone partnerships as it builds out its own capabilities. The company said it will continue working with Alphabet’s Wing and Israeli drone company Flytrex even as DoorDash Air comes online. DoorDash first partnered with Wing in 2022 to launch drone deliveries in Australia, later expanding that partnership to several U.S. markets, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area in 2024, where customers have been able to order from merchants such as Wendy’s locations and receive deliveries at speeds of up to 65 miles per hour at a cruising altitude of roughly 150 feet.

The push into drones builds on DoorDash’s broader investment in autonomous delivery technology over the past several years. DoorDash Labs is also responsible for developing Dot, the company’s autonomous sidewalk delivery robot, which launched in September 2025 and currently operates in the Phoenix, Arizona, suburbs of Tempe, Mesa, Gilbert and Chandler, as well as in Fremont, California.

DoorDash has framed its expanding robotics and drone efforts as part of a broader strategy to reduce its reliance on human couriers for certain types of orders, given that courier wages represent a significant recurring expense for the company’s business model. Drones in particular offer a way to more efficiently serve orders originating from remote or hard-to-reach locations where human delivery workers may be less willing or able to travel quickly.

Internal data from DoorDash’s existing drone delivery pilot programs has shown encouraging results for participating merchants. Some businesses involved in the company’s partner-operated drone pilots saw their DoorDash order volume rise by roughly 30%, a gain the company said persisted for at least nine weeks following the initial rollout of drone delivery options in those markets.

Central to DoorDash’s broader delivery strategy is what the company calls its Autonomous Delivery Platform, a system designed to determine in real time which delivery method, whether a human courier known internally as a Dasher, the Dot sidewalk robot, a drone, or an outside delivery partner, is best suited to fulfill a given order. The system factors in the specific order details, delivery route, prevailing conditions and available transportation options when making that determination, with company officials suggesting that drones are generally best suited for mid-range orders, while human couriers remain preferable for deliveries involving apartment buildings, larger orders or more complex handoffs.

Shares of DoorDash rose as much as 1.5% in premarket trading following the announcement before paring some of those gains as the broader market session got underway, reflecting a modestly positive but measured investor reaction to the company’s latest expansion into autonomous delivery infrastructure.