Japan Airlines’ and Sumitomo Corporation’s joint venture to buy up to 100 of Archer’s Midnight aircraft, worth $500 million

Sor­a­cle, a joint ven­ture estab­lished by Japan Air­lines and Sum­it­o­mo Cor­po­ra­tion, has signed an agree­ment with Archer for orders of up to 100 of its Mid­night air­craft, totalling approx­i­mate­ly $500 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny plans to launch its AAM oper­a­tions in Japan using Archer’s Mid­night air­craft and will devel­op a vari­ety of flight routes in attrac­tive areas for res­i­dents, as well as domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors.

Route loca­tions could include places like Tokyo, Osa­ka, Nagoya, Hokkai­do, Setouchi and Oki­nawa, with the aim of estab­lish­ing a
trans­porta­tion net­work that cre­ates new val­ue through mobil­i­ty in the sky.

To memo­ri­al­ize this joint agree­ment, Sor­a­cle and Archer held a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny in Tokyo on Sep­tem­ber 26th of this year.

Andrew Cum­mins, Senior Direc­tor of Busi­ness Devel­op­ment at Archer, said: “Japan is wide­ly respect­ed for its for­ward think­ing approach to trans­porta­tion and this invest­ment into advanced air mobil­i­ty is yet anoth­er exam­ple of that.

“We’re proud to stand with Sor­a­cle ahead of this new era of flight — togeth­er, we are com­mit­ted to bring­ing an inno­v­a­tive, sus­tain­able and con­ve­nient trans­porta­tion alter­na­tive to the coun­try.”

Sor­a­cle and Archer will work close­ly with the Japan­ese Civ­il Avi­a­tion Bureau (JCAB) to obtain the nec­es­sary per­mis­sions and cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, with Archer already hav­ing dis­cus­sions with JCAB and intend­ing to for­mal­ly apply for con­cur­rent type cer­tifi­cate
val­i­da­tion in the near future.

Midnight flight demo planned at 2025 World Expo

Addi­tion­al­ly, Archer and Sor­a­cle plan to con­duct a pub­lic flight demon­stra­tion at the 2025 World Expo in Osa­ka, to build pub­lic sup­port, demon­strate the future of avi­a­tion and accel­er­ate stakeholder’s engage­ment in Japan.

The Expo is antic­i­pat­ed to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant glob­al events of the year, expect­ing around 28 mil­lion vis­i­tors from Japan, the USA and oth­er coun­tries over its six-months dura­tion.

It will also pro­vide numer­ous touch­points for poten­tial cus­tomers and pas­sen­gers to expe­ri­ence the Par­ties’ vision, align­ing per­fect­ly with the Expo’s theme of ‘Future Soci­ety Show­case.‘

Yuk­i­hi­ro Ota, Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer at Sor­a­cle, added: “Through the oper­a­tion of eVTOL air­craft, Sor­a­cle aims to enrich lives and soci­ety by cre­at­ing more acces­si­ble air trans­porta­tion ser­vices in Japan.

We will pro­vide safe and reli­able ser­vices to pas­sen­gers by mak­ing the most of the wealth of knowl­edge we have accu­mu­lat­ed at Japan Air­lines and Sum­it­o­mo Cor­po­ra­tion. Today’s announce­ment is a first step towards mak­ing the future we envi­sion a real­i­ty.”

Head­quar­tered in Tokyo, Sor­a­cle was estab­lished on June 3rd of this year and aims torev­o­lu­tion­ize mobil­i­ty in Japan by pro­vid­ing sus­tain­able and effi­cient air trans­porta­tion­so­lu­tions with eVTOL air­craft ser­vices.

This ini­tia­tive is part of a broad­er effort to inte­gratead­vanced air mobil­i­ty solu­tions into real­is­tic envi­ron­ments, enhanc­ing con­nec­tiv­i­ty and cre­at­ing new val­ue in air trans­porta­tion.

Archer’s elec­tric air­craft, Mid­night, is designed to offer pas­sen­gers a safe, sus­tain­able and low-noise alter­na­tive to ground trans­porta­tion:

● Trav­els at speeds up to 150 mph, turn­ing hour-long ground com­mutes into min­utes in the air

● Designed for back-to-back flights of 20–50 miles with min­i­mal charge time in between

● 100x qui­eter than a heli­copter at cruis­ing alti­tudes

● Redun­dant sys­tems across the air­craft designed for sim­i­lar lev­els of safe­ty as com­mer­cial air­lin­ers

● Pilot­ed, and designed to car­ry up to four pas­sen­gers with car­ry-on lug­gage