Archer unveils Midnight ‘Launch Edition’ Commercialisation Program with Abu Dhabi Aviation, plans to fly in UAE ‘in coming months’

Archer has announced a ‘Launch Edi­tion’ com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion pro­gram for its Mid­night eVTOL air­craft, which aims to estab­lish a prag­mat­ic and repeat­able com­mer­cial­iza­tion play­book to deploy Mid­night in dozens of ear­ly adopter mar­kets.

In a press release issued today (Thurs­day), Archer says this approach enables the com­pa­ny to build oper­a­tional exper­tise, gen­er­ate rev­enue and con­tin­ue to strength­en long-term demand in advance of Mid­night’s type cer­ti­fi­ca­tion by the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA).

Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion (ADA) is Archer’s first Launch Edi­tion cus­tomer and plans to deploy an ini­tial fleet of Mid­night air­craft lat­er this year. Both com­pa­nies will now work togeth­er to fly Mid­night in the UAE in the com­ing months, tar­get­ing a pas­sen­ger flight in Abu Dhabi lat­er this year. The two will also col­lab­o­rate across pilot train­ing, flight oper­a­tions and com­mu­ni­ty engage­ment.

Adam Gold­stein, CEO and Founder of Archer, said: “The unveil­ing of our Launch Edi­tion pro­gram marks the begin­ning of the next chap­ter for Archer. This is how we’ll bring Mid­night from the man­u­fac­tur­ing line to our first customers—and it’s a play­book we’ll run repeat­ed­ly as we scale our oper­a­tions glob­al­ly. Thank you to Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion for being our first Launch Edi­tion cus­tomer. We have a big year ahead.”

In addi­tion to the Launch Edi­tion air­craft, Archer also plans to pro­vide ADA with a team of pilots, tech­ni­cians and engi­neers to sup­port the ini­tial oper­a­tional ramp, help­ing ensure a safe and effi­cient deploy­ment.

Archer also plans to pro­vide back­end soft­ware infra­struc­ture and front-end book­ing appli­ca­tion to help pow­er urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions dur­ing the Launch Edi­tion pro­gram.

His Excel­len­cy Nad­er Al Ham­ma­di, Chair­man of Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion, added: “We have been observ­ing the advance­ments in eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy for years, and we are proud to part­ner with Archer to bring this inno­va­tion to the UAE.

“Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion has the exper­tise to devel­op a scal­able urban air mobil­i­ty ser­vice and we are excit­ed to lead the way in launch­ing the region’s first elec­tric air taxi ser­vice, start­ing right here in Abu Dhabi.”

The part­ner­ship between Archer and Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion was for­malised this week dur­ing a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny along­side the Abu Dhabi Invest­ment Office, where Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion signed a mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing set­ting forth a frame­work to fund the deploy­ment of the Mid­night Launch Edi­tion air­craft.

Archer will con­tin­ue to work close­ly with ADA, the Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (GCAA) and its oth­er estab­lished part­ners in the region on its goal of launch­ing elec­tric air taxis in Abu Dhabi this year.