Archer, United Airlines Announce First Commercial eVTOL Route in the U.S

Archer Avi­a­tion and Unit­ed Air­lines announced today their first air­port to city cen­tre com­mer­cial route between United’s hub at Newark Lib­er­ty Inter­na­tion­al Air­port (EWR) and New York City, reports a press release.

The release says, “The Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port, locat­ed just above Bat­tery Park on Pier 6 has been con­firmed as the first planned take­off and land­ing sites as part of Archer’s broad­er plan to launch an Urban Air Mobil­i­ty (UAM) net­work across the New York Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area.”

It con­tin­ues, “Archer’s pro­posed Man­hat­tan to EWR route marks the first spe­cif­ic route that has been announced in the eVTOL indus­try. United’s hub at EWR is ide­al­ly locat­ed to serve Man­hat­tan and its sur­round­ing bor­oughs, as well as com­mu­ni­ties in New Jer­sey.”

Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port (cred­it: David Jones/Wikimedia Com­mons)

Archer esti­mates the jour­ney from the Down­town Man­hat­tan Heli­port to EWR will take less than 10 min­utes via its Mid­night air­craft. A sim­i­lar jour­ney by car can take upwards of an hour or more dur­ing rush hour traf­fic.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “We’re excit­ed to be con­firm­ing New York as the first of many routes we’ll be announc­ing along­side Unit­ed as we work to build out our nation­al UAM net­work. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Unit­ed and to work­ing close­ly with state and local gov­ern­ment lead­ers in the New York and New Jer­sey area as we bring this excit­ing new form of trans­porta­tion to life.”

Michael Lesk­i­nen, Pres­i­dent of Unit­ed Air­lines added, “Once oper­a­tional, elec­tric air taxis will fun­da­men­tal­ly change how Unit­ed cus­tomers expe­ri­ence com­fort, con­ve­nience, and effi­cien­cy dur­ing their com­mutes to the air­port.”

Michael Lesk­i­nen (cred­it: Unit­ed Air­lines)

Archer’s ear­ly launch routes will pro­vide air­port to city cen­tre trans­porta­tion ser­vice, which it refers to as “trunk” routes. Once these pri­ma­ry flight paths have been estab­lished, Archer will begin build­ing out “branch” routes to con­nect sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties. The first phase of this UAM net­work is tar­get­ed for launch in 2025.

This news fol­lows United’s recent USD10 mil­lion pre-deliv­ery pay­ment for 100 of Archer’s eVTOL air­craft.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://www.archer.com/

https://www.united.com/en/gb

(Top image: Reuters)