DoorDash has unveiled the aircraft behind DoorDash Air and will begin pilot deliveries in Northern California with Chipotle and Popeyes. Manna, which flew more than 300,000 deliveries from Dublin and Cork, paused Irish operations in June for want of a national policy and is building a factory in Oklahoma.

DoorDash has unveiled the aircraft behind its own drone service, starting in Northern California with Chipotle and Popeyes. Europe’s largest drone delivery company spent this summer doing the opposite. Manna flew 300,000 orders over Dublin and Cork, stopped, and is building a factory in Oklahoma.

The DoorDash aircraft has six slow-spinning propellers and a winch, and at delivery height sounds roughly like a passing car. About 80% of its restaurant orders are light and small enough to fly.

Early tests put restaurant-to-door times under five minutes on average. Harrison Shih, who heads DoorDash Air, said the team began with how local businesses actually operate rather than with the aircraft.

Both figures are DoorDash’s own estimates, drawn from limited distances and sample periods, and the company says delivery times are not guaranteed.

The regulatory position is narrower than the launch suggests. DoorDash took Part 135 certification in July as the eighth American operator, without rights to fly beyond visual line of sight.

Without those, drones make short supervised hops rather than a network. Every operator meets that wall eventually.

Manna met a different one. The Irish company flew more than 300,000 deliveries for over 120 businesses, paused in June, and is now building a factory in Tulsa for around 1,000 workers.

Bobby Healy, its chief executive, said Ireland had no clear national policy and the company could not scale without one. The United States, he said, has the market everybody wants.

None of this is European yet, although DoorDash owns Deliveroo and Wolt across more than 40 countries. Research and manufacturing stay in Ireland. The flying does not.

Uber reached the same conclusion from the other direction, signing Manna in February for the first drone deliveries on a European platform.

The same DoorDash event produced an ordering agent inside Apple’s Messages app, along with Macy’s, The North Face and Vans on its marketplace and an $8 returns fee.

DoorDash says it has completed hundreds of thousands of autonomous deliveries across its ground robot Dot and its drone partners, which include Alphabet’s Wing and Israel’s Flytrex.

Manna managed 300,000 on its own before the policy ran out. The aircraft was not the part that failed.