“Archer Exceeds 400 Test Flights This Year, Four Months Ahead Of Schedule”

Archer Avi­a­tion announced last week, it has com­plet­ed 402 test flights to date, exceed­ing the 400 flight goal it set for 2024, and is four months ahead of sched­ule, reports a press release. These flights were con­duct­ed dur­ing the last eight months as the com­pa­ny ramps up tri­al oper­a­tions in advance of for-cred­it flight test­ing with the FAA.

Adam Gold­stein, co-Founder and CEO of Archer, com­ment­ed, “When we first set our goal for 400 flights this year it was viewed as aggres­sive, but here we are in August already knock­ing it out. I’m proud of our test team and the sup­port­ing groups that has made this hap­pen.” Each flight offers crit­i­cal data which Archer’s teams employ to eval­u­ate and refine air­craft loads, vibra­tions, per­for­mance and han­dling qual­i­ties.

Most recent­ly, the Archer flight test team has focused on five key test­ing areas:-

: Tran­si­tion Flights — Con­tin­u­ing to con­duct longer-dis­tance and high­er-speed tran­si­tion flights to gath­er data, extend endurance and ensure max­i­mum safe­ty.

: High-Rate Oper­a­tions - Increas­ing per-day flights to sim­u­late the high cadence of Archer’s antic­i­pat­ed com­mer­cial oper­a­tions and test Midnight’s dura­bil­i­ty.

: Advanc­ing Land­ing Pro­files - Com­plet­ing a series of hov­er land­ings in var­i­ous wind con­di­tions with dif­fer­ent rates of descent and flare heights to expand Midnight’s wind enve­lope and fur­ther opti­mise its land­ing pro­file.

: Enhanc­ing Acoustic Mea­sure­ment — Con­duct­ing a series of hov­er oper­a­tions with var­i­ous micro­phone arrays to col­lect sup­ple­men­tal data for the FAA and to fur­ther eval­u­ate and tune Midnight’s noise sig­na­ture.

: Opti­mis­ing Con­trol Laws — Regress­ing through the enve­lope with a series of opti­mi­sa­tions made to the con­trol laws which will extend Midnight’s endurance.

While Archer must be applaud­ed for the rapid deploy­ment of these tri­als, the com­pa­ny still remains well behind its pri­ma­ry con­tender, Joby Avi­a­tion.

Joby first began fly­ing full-scale pre-pro­duc­tion pro­to­type air­craft more than four years ago, and by May of this year, the com­pa­ny’s two pre-pro­duc­tion air­craft had com­plet­ed more than 1,500 flights, span­ning a total dis­tance of over 33,000 miles, includ­ing more than 100 flights with a pilot onboard.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.archer.com 

(Top image: Joby Avi­a­tion)

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