Watch Video: Archer Completes “All-Important Midnight’s Transition Flight” 

Archer Avi­a­tion tri­umphant­ly announced this week that on June 8th, its Mid­night air­craft suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed tran­si­tion fly­ing at a speed of 100+ mph, reports a press release. Archer has now achieved this with two dif­fer­ent full-scale eVTOLs. 

The release explains, “Tran­si­tion is well known in the indus­try as a very dif­fi­cult mile­stone that few com­pa­nies have reached. At 6,500 lbs, Mid­night is believed to be one of the largest eVTOL air­craft to com­plete tran­si­tion, which is crit­i­cal to being able to car­ry com­mer­cial­ly viable pas­sen­ger pay­loads.” 

This par­tic­u­lar­ly flight occurs when the air­craft takes off ver­ti­cal­ly like a heli­copter, accel­er­ates for­ward, tran­si­tions from thrust-borne to wing-borne flight like an air­plane with tilt pro­pellers for­ward before decel­er­at­ing and land­ing ver­ti­cal­ly. 

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s co-Founder and CEO, remarked, “Tran­si­tion­ing two gen­er­a­tions of full-scale eVTOL air­craft in less than two years is anoth­er remark­able achieve­ment for our team. This shows we con­tin­ue to suc­cess­ful­ly exe­cute against our plan to cre­ate the most effi­cient path to mar­ket with an air­craft that is designed for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and to be man­u­fac­tured effi­cient­ly at scale.” 

Mid­night is now the 7th full-scale eVTOL that Archer’s CTO, Tom Muniz, and Chief Engi­neer, Dr. Geoff Bow­er, have built and flown in their respec­tive careers. 

Archer’s first gen­er­a­tion, Mak­er, suc­cess­ful­ly achieved tran­si­tion in Novem­ber, 2022, eleven months after its first flight, and still flies reg­u­lar­ly in the company’s test pro­gram. Just sev­en months after Midnight’s first jour­ney in the sky, Archer has now suc­cess­ful­ly tran­si­tioned its pro­duc­tion eVTOL air­craft as the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to build momen­tum towards com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. 

Dr Bow­er, Archer’s Chief Engi­neer, com­ment­ed, “Over the sev­en eVTOL air­craft I’ve built and flown in my career, they have become pro­gres­sive­ly larg­er as we pur­sued pay­loads that made the plat­form com­mer­cial­ly viable. Mid­night is believed to be one of the largest eVTOL’s to ever achieve tran­si­tion and one of the first that is pur­pose built to car­ry enough pas­sen­gers to be able to oper­ate a suc­cess­ful air taxi busi­ness.”

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The release con­tin­ues, “Midnight’s flight test pro­gram will now con­tin­ue its progress with plans to fly sim­u­lat­ed com­mer­cial routes to demon­strate the aircraft’s oper­a­tional readi­ness, exe­cut­ing high-rate flight oper­a­tions, test­ing addi­tion­al flight maneu­vers that will be used in com­mer­cial set­tings along with con­tin­u­ing to expand its speed and endurance flight enve­lope.” 

Mean­while, Archer con­tin­ues to make cer­ti­fi­ca­tion progress as the com­pa­ny has now received its Part 135 and Part 145 cer­tifi­cates from the FAA. Addi­tion­al­ly, Archer is one of two com­pa­nies in the world to have its final air­wor­thi­ness cri­te­ria for an eVTOL air­craft issued by the reg­u­la­tor. Mid­night is now in the final “imple­men­ta­tion” phase of its Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­gram with pilot­ed flight test­ing on track to begin lat­er this year. 

For more infor­ma­tion

www.archer.com

(Top image: Midnight’s Tran­si­tion Flight)

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