MANY MINDEDDoorDash wins FAA carrier certificate for its own delivery drones
DoorDash announced a drone delivery arm called DoorDash Air, backed by a Part 135 air carrier certification from the US Federal Aviation Administration. That certificate is what legally allows a company to operate a commercial drone delivery service in the US. The company did not give a timeline for when its own aircraft will start flying.
Early operations will likely be limited pilots with drones flying short distances within the operator's line of sight. Longer autonomous routes need FAA approval of Beyond Visual Line of Sight technology, which Amazon, Wing, and Zipline already hold. DoorDash Air came out of DoorDash Labs, the same group behind the 350-pound Dot sidewalk bot now running in several Arizona cities and in Fremont, California, and its Autonomous Delivery Platform software coordinates deliveries across bots, human drivers, and drones. DoorDash keeps its existing drone partnerships with Wing and Flytrex.
For mobility and goods, owning the flight operation rather than renting it changes the cost structure. If a platform can route the cheapest available method for each order across drones, bots, and cars, last-mile delivery drifts toward near-free, which lowers the effective price of getting food and small goods to a doorstep.
What to watch is the BVLOS approval and an actual launch date, neither of which the company has provided. Until drones fly beyond line of sight at scale, this remains an approved capability rather than a running service.
Source: TechCrunch