Walmart Drone Delivery Partner Becomes Part 135 Air Carrier

DroneUp on Tuesday announced that it received Part 119 certification from the FAA to operate its drone delivery service as a Part 135 air carrier. In other words, the longtime Walmart partner can now fly farther and reach more customers in its core market of Dallas-Fort Worth.

The approval allows DroneUp to fly its drones beyond the visual line of sight (BVLOS) of their pilots. Previously, BVLOS restrictions capped the company’s delivery radius at about three miles. But the FAA this week raised it to five. According to DroneUp, that translates to a 300 percent increase in the number of households it can cover.

“We are very grateful for the collaborative process we undertook with the FAA in achieving this certification; the fastest drone company to achieve air carrier certification that was not based on an existing platform,” said Anthony Vittone, chief operating officer of DroneUp.

Because the FAA has yet to finalize rules on BVLOS drone operations, the agency requires companies to obtain those permissions via waiver or exemption. DroneUp is one of just six U.S. drone operators to obtain Part 135 air carrier certification, which allows the holder to complete BVLOS deliveries for payment.

Other Part 135 recipients include medical drone delivery titan Zipline, Amazon’s Prime Air, and Wing, the drone delivery arm of Google parent Alphabet. DroneUp’s standard approval permits it to fly its on-demand delivery service first in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, and later in other locations.

DroneUp and Walmart at one point operated 36 drone delivery hubs across seven states, covering an estimated 4 million people. In August, though, the partners decided to downsize. DroneUp cut about 18 percent of its headcount and shuttered hubs in Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Tampa, Florida, to focus instead on Dallas-Fort Worth, where the FAA in July lifted drone delivery restrictions for Walmart’s other partners, Zipline and Wing.

The move leaves the partners with 15 hubs, most of which are in Dallas-Fort Worth. According to Walmart, that service has the potential to reach 1.8 million customers in the rapidly growing metro area.

DroneUp last year secured the FAA’s green light to deliver BVLOS for customer Riverside Health System in Virginia. With its new approval, the company will start flying third-party goods BVLOS over populated areas in the Dallas-Fort Worth suburb of Murphy, Texas. Soon, it will expand those permissions across its ten hubs in the city—and eventually, nationwide.

“This certification underscores our commitment to innovation, safety, and operational excellence as we expand drone delivery services nationwide,” said Tom Walker, founder and CEO of DroneUp. “This milestone is just the beginning as we lead the charge toward a future where drone delivery becomes an integral part of everyday life.”

For the most part, drone delivery suffers from the same unit economics issues faced by on-demand food delivery platforms such as DoorDash and Uber Eats. For example, Walker in August told Axios it costs DroneUp about $30 to deliver a single package by drone, though the company expects to improve that figure with the introduction of an automated delivery ecosystem.

A larger delivery radius will also help, as it nets a drone operator more potential customers. Zipline, Wing, Prime Air, and other operators have similarly applied for and obtained permission to expand their delivery zones.

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