Matternet Adds Third Part 135 Drone Delivery Partner

Matternet, the only company holding an FAA Type Certificate for a delivery drone, announced on July 15, 2026 that it partnered with Beeline UAS, a new FAA Part 135 air carrier operator, to expand commercial drone delivery across the United States. The deal adds a third operating partner to Matternet's network and targets beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) service in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

Background

Matternet has run commercial drone delivery since 2014, starting with humanitarian flights before moving into hospital logistics in Europe in 2017 and the United States in 2019. The company builds the M2 aircraft — a small quadcopter certified to carry up to 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) as far as 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) — along with the Matternet Station launch-and-recovery hardware and the software that schedules and tracks each flight. By mid-2026, the platform had logged more than 60,000 commercial flights across the US and Europe.

Matternet does not fly its own drones commercially in the US. Instead, it licenses the M2 platform to carriers that hold their own FAA Part 135 certificate — the same air-carrier authorization that governs charter airlines and cargo operators, and the credential the FAA requires for any company that wants to fly drones commercially beyond what a remote pilot can see. Read PickDrones' explainer on what BVLOS means for the underlying rule that makes this kind of network expansion possible.

This split structure — one company certifying the aircraft, a separate company certifying the operation — has become the default path to scaled US drone delivery while the FAA works through broader BVLOS rulemaking. Rather than every delivery startup pursuing its own aircraft type certificate, a process that has taken Matternet more than a decade, operators can license an already-certified platform and concentrate their own FAA application on flight operations, training, and airspace procedures. Zipline and Wing have followed variations of the same model with their own carrier partners.

What Beeline UAS Brings to the Network

Beeline UAS is a B2B operations company that holds an FAA Part 135 air carrier certificate but does not build or sell its own drone hardware. Instead, it supplies the flight operations staff, regulatory paperwork, and airspace-integration expertise that let a hardware platform like Matternet's move from pilot program to repeatable commercial service.

Beeline joins Ameriflight and UPS Flight Forward as the third Part 135 partner in Matternet's network. Ameriflight and UPS Flight Forward have focused on healthcare logistics — including hospital-campus deliveries the same way Zipline has scaled its own medical drone delivery network — while Beeline's initial rollout targets food, retail, and healthcare delivery in two of the country's densest urban markets.

"Long-term leadership in drone delivery will be determined by the ability to safely deploy, manage and scale fleets through integrated technology and a strong operating network," Matternet CEO Andreas Raptopoulos said in the announcement. Beeline CEO Toby Woods said the company's mission is "to make the impossible routine by enabling safe, compliant, and scalable drone operations."

Why the Bay Area and Los Angeles

The initial BVLOS expansion covers the San Francisco Bay Area and the Los Angeles metropolitan area — two markets with dense population, heavy traffic congestion, and the kind of short-hop logistics demand that favors drone delivery over ground vehicles. Matternet already operates B2C delivery in Silicon Valley, where it began in 2024, giving Beeline an established regulatory and operational base to build on rather than starting FAA coordination from zero.

Neither company gave a firm launch date or delivery volume target for the Beeline-operated routes. The announcement frames the partnership as the next step in scaling, not a launch of service itself — the FAA authorization and route buildout with Beeline will follow the same certification path Ameriflight and UPS Flight Forward used with Matternet.

What This Means for Drone Pilots

For remote pilots and drone operations companies, the Matternet-Beeline deal is a signal that the Part 135 route to commercial BVLOS delivery is maturing into a repeatable playbook rather than a one-off approval. Operators without their own certified aircraft can now partner with a Type-Certified platform like Matternet's M2 and focus on the operational and regulatory work Part 135 requires, instead of building and certifying hardware from scratch.

The expansion also adds competitive pressure in two of the largest US metro markets, alongside Zipline's growing US footprint and Wing's ongoing retail partnerships. Pilots and small operators working toward BVLOS waivers should watch how quickly the FAA processes Beeline's route authorizations in the Bay Area and LA — the timeline will be a practical indicator of how fast the agency is moving scaled urban drone delivery from pilot programs to routine airspace use.

Sources: Matternet press release via Business Wire | DRONELIFE