Manna Secures ‘Significant’ Regulatory milestone with SAIL III Operational Authorisation from UK Civil Aviation Authority

Man­na Air Deliv­ery has become one of the first drone deliv­ery com­pa­nies to receive a SAIL III Oper­a­tional Autho­ri­sa­tion (OA) from the UK Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (CAA), rep­re­sent­ing one of the most advanced oper­a­tional approvals cur­rent­ly grant­ed for uncrewed air­craft oper­a­tions in the Unit­ed King­dom.

The autho­ri­sa­tion marks a sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stone for Man­na and fol­lows a com­pre­hen­sive assess­ment process, under­tak­en with reg­u­la­to­ry sup­port from Avtrain, designed to eval­u­ate the safe­ty, oper­a­tional, tech­ni­cal and organ­i­sa­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties required for advanced drone oper­a­tions.

Under the Spe­cif­ic Oper­a­tions Risk Assess­ment (SORA) frame­work, SAIL III autho­ri­sa­tions are reserved for oper­a­tions that require a high degree of reg­u­la­to­ry scruti­ny and demon­stra­tion of safe­ty assur­ance.

Achiev­ing this stan­dard requires oper­a­tors to pro­vide exten­sive evi­dence across oper­a­tional, tech­ni­cal and organ­i­sa­tion­al domains, sup­port­ed by detailed risk assess­ments, safe­ty cas­es and inde­pen­dent review.

The autho­ri­sa­tion also reflects the UK CAA’s con­fi­dence that Man­na has demon­strat­ed the sys­tems, pro­ce­dures and gov­er­nance nec­es­sary to con­duct advanced uncrewed air­craft oper­a­tions in accor­dance with strin­gent reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments. 

Manna’s Head of Reg­u­la­tion Kevin Hous­ton said, “This autho­ri­sa­tion rep­re­sents an impor­tant mile­stone for Man­na and reflects the sig­nif­i­cant effort invest­ed across our organ­i­sa­tion to meet the high­est stan­dards of safe­ty and oper­a­tional excel­lence.”

“The UK CAA has estab­lished a rig­or­ous and high­ly pro­fes­sion­al assess­ment process for advanced uncrewed avi­a­tion oper­a­tions. Suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ing that process pro­vides strong inde­pen­dent val­i­da­tion of our sys­tems, pro­ce­dures, tech­nol­o­gy and organ­i­sa­tion­al matu­ri­ty.”

This lat­est approval builds upon a series of sig­nif­i­cant reg­u­la­to­ry mile­stones achieved by Man­na across Europe and the Unit­ed States.

In 2021, Man­na became the first drone deliv­ery com­pa­ny in Europe to receive a Light UAS Oper­a­tor Cer­tifi­cate (LUC) from the Irish Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty, pro­vid­ing the abil­i­ty to self-autho­rise cer­tain oper­a­tions under the Euro­pean reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work.

The com­pa­ny has also expand­ed flight activ­i­ties into addi­tion­al Euro­pean juris­dic­tions, includ­ing Fin­land, along­side con­tin­ued reg­u­la­to­ry engage­ment and oper­a­tional growth inter­na­tion­al­ly. These mile­stones demon­strate Man­na’s long-stand­ing com­mit­ment to reg­u­la­to­ry lead­er­ship and the safe inte­gra­tion of uncrewed air­craft with­in nation­al avi­a­tion sys­tems.

The assess­ment process also includ­ed inde­pen­dent review and sup­port from Mar­shall in its role as a Recog­nised Assess­ment Enti­ty for Flight­wor­thi­ness (RAE(F)), pro­vid­ing an addi­tion­al lay­er of tech­ni­cal and oper­a­tional assur­ance through­out the autho­ri­sa­tion process.

The approval pro­vides fur­ther sig­nif­i­cant third-par­ty val­i­da­tion of Man­na’s oper­a­tional matu­ri­ty, safe­ty cul­ture and reg­u­la­to­ry capa­bil­i­ty, demon­strat­ing the com­pa­ny’s abil­i­ty to sat­is­fy some of the most demand­ing reg­u­la­to­ry and safe­ty require­ments cur­rent­ly applied to advanced uncrewed avi­a­tion oper­a­tions in Europe.

The approval fol­lows an exten­sive reg­u­la­to­ry engage­ment process involv­ing detailed oper­a­tional reviews, tech­ni­cal assess­ments and safe­ty eval­u­a­tions.

Man­na acknowl­edged the sup­port and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of all organ­i­sa­tions involved through­out the autho­ri­sa­tion process, adding: “We would like to thank the team at the UK CAA for their engage­ment, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and col­lab­o­ra­tive approach through­out the assess­ment process. Their com­mit­ment to enabling inno­va­tion while main­tain­ing rig­or­ous safe­ty stan­dards has been instru­men­tal in bring­ing this autho­ri­sa­tion to fruition.

“We would also like to thank Avtrain for its reg­u­la­to­ry guid­ance and sup­port through­out the appli­ca­tion process, as well as Mar­shall for its exper­tise and proac­tive engage­ment as the Recog­nised Assess­ment Enti­ty. Both organ­i­sa­tions made invalu­able con­tri­bu­tions through­out what was a high­ly detailed and demand­ing reg­u­la­to­ry process.”

The achieve­ment fur­ther strength­ens Man­na’s posi­tion as one of Europe’s lead­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tors and a recog­nised stan­dard bear­er for reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance, safe­ty assur­ance and oper­a­tional excel­lence with­in the Euro­pean uncrewed avi­a­tion sec­tor.

Manna’s con­tin­ued reg­u­la­to­ry progress comes against a back­drop of rapid com­mer­cial momen­tum and grow­ing glob­al adop­tion of advanced last-mile air deliv­ery. In April 2026, Man­na announced a $50 mil­lion Series B fund­ing round, bring­ing total fund­ing to $110 mil­lion, to accel­er­ate the scal­ing of aer­i­al deliv­ery across the Unit­ed States and Europe.

The com­pa­ny plans to grow from 180 employ­ees to more than 570, cre­at­ing 400 new roles across Ire­land and the US in robot­ics, soft­ware engi­neer­ing, mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing, avi­a­tion oper­a­tions, ground oper­a­tions and reg­u­la­to­ry func­tions.

The fund­ing will sup­port Manna’s expan­sion to 40 oper­a­tional bases across the Unit­ed States and Europe, build­ing on live oper­a­tions already under­way in Ire­land and Texas. Man­na has also expand­ed its plat­form part­ner­ships, adding Uber to exist­ing part­ner­ships with Deliv­eroo, Just Eat and Door­Dash, enabling cus­tomers to order through the apps they already use while Man­na pro­vides the aer­i­al deliv­ery infra­struc­ture behind the scenes.