Zipline’s fleet, day by day
A Terminal case study of Zipline’s fleet in the FAA aircraft registry, counted in every capture and tested against the company’s public events.
Zipline is private and publishes no fleet count. The FAA registry does, if you keep every version of it.
Zipline’s visible fleet doubled in six months to 2,853, about 80% of visible U.S. delivery drones.
Before its Uber deal, Zipline registered aircraft faster than its usual pace. 406 of the 429 aircraft it added in those weeks were in the public FAA file before the announcement, so the build-out was visible before the news.
The registry does not lead every time. The full study tests every comparable Zipline event against a rule set before testing, and the Uber deal was the one clear hit. The registry shows capacity, not flights, and small drones register in a system that is not public.