Archer Aviation Plans Multi-State City-to-City Tour with Midnight eVTOL Prototype
Why It MattersThe tour signals eVTOL manufacturers shifting from isolated test flights toward real-world city-to-city demonstrations as they prepare for FAA pilot programs and commercial air taxi launches ahead of major events.
Archer Aviation announced Thursday that it plans to fly its four-passenger Midnight eVTOL prototype on city-to-city routes across the Los Angeles area, Texas, and Florida in the coming months. The San Jose, California-based company's "No Roads" tour opens with Northern California flights starting in Hollister and continuing to Monterey, San Martin, San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco. Archer said the flights are coordinated with the FAA and intended to prepare the company for commercial air taxi operations under the FAA's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic Games, for which Archer is the official air taxi provider. CEO Adam Goldstein called the tour the company's "biggest step yet toward making air taxis an everyday reality."
The tour follows more than 70 test flights conducted in August from Archer's flight-test facility at Salinas Municipal Airport in Monterey County. Archer has not specified which aircraft will fly the tour; its only piloted city-to-city flight to date, a Salinas-to-Monterey round trip on July 30, used a nonconforming prototype that cannot transition between vertical and wing-borne flight and uses two-blade lifting propellers rather than the four-blade design Archer plans to certify. A second piloted Midnight, cleared for flight by the FAA in February, has been conducting vertical takeoff and landing tests, though Archer has not yet announced a piloted transition flight.
Archer also plans to announce charging sites in several states during the tour, part of America's Consortium for Electric Skyways, a venture formed with Beta Technologies and Macquarie Capital. The eVTOL Integration Pilot Program is a three-year initiative allowing manufacturers to fly real-world operations, potentially with paying passengers, before obtaining FAA type certification, a milestone that appears likely to slip from Archer's end-of-year target into 2027 or later.
