DoorDash (NASDAQ: DASH) has secured Federal Aviation Administration Part 135 air-carrier certification and used the clearance to launch DoorDash Air, an in-house drone delivery program built by its DoorDash Labs robotics unit. The certification, disclosed on July 29, 2026, makes DoorDash the eighth operator in the United States authorised to fly commercial drone missions, including beyond visual line of sight.
DoorDash builds its own drone
DoorDash Labs, which also develops the ground bots and Dasher-facing autonomy tools inside the DoorDash marketplace, is now designing a custom drone and the ground infrastructure that supports it. "We want drone delivery to work for any merchant, anywhere," said Harrison Shih, head of DoorDash Air, in the company statement. "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." First-party service is scheduled to begin this fall.
Existing Wing and Flytrex deals stay in place
DoorDash already runs live drone routes through partnerships with Alphabet's Wing and Israeli operator Flytrex; those relationships will continue as DoorDash Air scales alongside them. According to DoorDash, drone deliveries under five miles average fewer than 25 minutes, giving the platform a lever to trim marginal delivery costs on short suburban trips that today rely on human couriers.
Eighth Part 135 approval in a crowded suburban sky
Part 135 remains the sharpest bottleneck in commercial drone delivery, and the club of approved operators is still small. Wing, Zipline, Amazon Prime Air, UPS Flight Forward, Matternet and Flytrex sit alongside a handful of others; DoorDash now joins them after clearing the FAA's five-stage evaluation for airworthiness, fleet maintenance and safety protocols. The certification also positions DoorDash to lean on its own hardware and flight-ops team as the FAA finalises its expanded BVLOS rules.
Reporting based on coverage from Axios, TechCrunch, Seeking Alpha and DoorDash's own release.