DoorDash Delivery Drones Are Coming With A Hot Pizza - DTNS 5320

**Jason Howell** (0:05)
This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, July 29th, 2026 We tell you what you need to know, give you the important context, and help each other understand, hopefully.

**Sarah Lane** (0:14)
Today, DoorDash has its own fleet of delivery drones coming to your doorstep in the future.

**Jason Howell** (0:22)
They should make that noise, really.
That would be awesome, the Jetsons noise. I'm Jason Howell.

**Sarah Lane** (0:27)
And I'm Sarah Lane.

**Jason Howell** (0:28)
Let's start with what you need to know with a big story.
No, the news is not that DoorDash has licensed the Jetsons sound effect to include on its drones. That's not the news because that didn't actually happen. Although I would totally support it. That would be pretty cool. But DoorDash is launching a new in-house drone delivery business called DoorDash Air. It actually just secured a part 135 air carrier certification from the FAA. Here in the US, that clears it to run commercial drone deliveries in the US on the hardware that it's building. DoorDash will be designing its own aircraft for this service, and it's going to start with short-range line-of-sight pilots before eventually moving kind of into the more of the ambitious autonomous flight category. When that happens, those flights would require a separate beyond visual line-of-sight approval. DoorDash Air sits inside of DoorDash Labs. This is the same R&D lab that built its DOT, Autonomous Sidewalk Bot that basically runs around on the sidewalks of Phoenix, Arizona and the suburbs, apparently, Fremont, California, which is a little closer to me. Maybe I should take a field trip to Fremont and get a DoorDash Bot sidewalk delivery. DoorDash is keeping its existing drone partnerships that it has with the Vets Wing and Flytrex, so those aren't going away. DoorDash Labs has also built an autonomous delivery platform that it's going to use to help the company decide in real time, like is this a delivery approach?
Is this delivery the kind of thing that would be better fit by a human driver? Would it be better by a drone in the sky or a sidewalk bot? They've got their own operating system to manage that, as you might imagine. Timeline on this, DoorDash's Custom Drones appearing everywhere for everyday service is unclear. Unfortunately, I can't give you a date to say, look in the skies because here it comes, but I think it's safe to say that an FAA certification is a big step in that direction.
I don't know, how do you feel about food delivery from the skies? It's not something that I've never found.

**Sarah Lane** (2:47)
I've been waiting for it for 10 years now. And we keep talking about delivery services via drone. Amazon, very limited testing.
It was promised that drones would be just throughout the sky at this point. We also were promised jet packs. It's true.

**Jason Howell** (3:09)
I'm wearing one, by the way. You can't see it because I'm facing the camera, but anyway.

**Sarah Lane** (3:12)
Where's mine? Amazon delivery.

**Jason Howell** (3:15)
Play it again.

**Sarah Lane** (3:16)
But there are so many promises of what drones can do. Now drones do a lot of stuff.
Militarily, that is one category. Obviously, cool photography and that sort of stuff. But when it actually comes to delivering goods, delivering pharmaceutical goods or perishable goods in the right situation, it's happening, but it's not happening at the length that I would have expected in 2026 DoorDash is very popular. I don't use DoorDash very often just because I'm an Uber Eats person, but I'm trying to cut down on deliveries in general.
But when you said, the companies are trying to figure out when is the drone the right delivery? When is it a car? When is it a sidewalk robot? And all of those things have a lot to do with the food that you're getting. How far away are you from the delivery warehouse or wherever it's originating from? The line of sight test makes sense because obviously DoorDash wants to get this right. But at the same time, it's like, all right, well, if I go out onto my street and I look due north, I can see the Hollywood sign. Is that line of sight?
It's not very close to me.
We're miles away. You can see it. But you can see it. Yeah. I mean, I'm like, that's line of sight. So I would be interested in knowing a little bit more about how things are supposed to work before they scale.
Then you get into the whole issue that a lot of these companies just haven't figured out is, how do you deliver something via drone depending with, for example, my building, I've got a front yard, but it's all trees. It would be difficult. You could get it onto the driveway or whatever. But then there's cars and is it a front porch? Do you deliver it to somebody's roof? Is it only backyards? So it's just so many variables.