Archer and ITA Airways Plan Electric Air Taxi Network in Italy

Archer Avi­a­tion and ITA Air­ways have signed an agree­ment to explore the devel­op­ment of an all-elec­tric air taxi net­work in Italy, with ser­vices envis­aged in major cities using Archer’s Mid­night elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft.

The part­ner­ship will focus on assess­ing how air taxi ser­vices could con­nect air­ports with city cen­tres and oth­er des­ti­na­tions, while inte­grat­ing with ITA Air­ways’ exist­ing air­line net­work. The Ital­ian car­ri­er will work on the pas­sen­ger jour­ney and poten­tial links with its ser­vices, while spe­cialised part­ners are expect­ed to be respon­si­ble for oper­at­ing the air taxis.

Archer says the Mid­night air­craft is designed for short, repeat­ed flights, with the aim of replac­ing road jour­neys last­ing 60–90 min­utes with flights of around 10–20 min­utes. One poten­tial route iden­ti­fied by the com­pa­nies is between Rome Fiu­mi­ci­no Air­port and cen­tral Rome, which Archer esti­mates could take less than 10 min­utes by air.

The pro­posed network’s loca­tions, launch date, fleet size and finan­cial arrange­ments have not been dis­closed. Archer’s announce­ment also states that the arrange­ments remain con­di­tion­al and sub­ject to defin­i­tive agree­ments and oth­er con­di­tions, mean­ing the part­ner­ship does not yet estab­lish a con­firmed com­mer­cial ser­vice.

ITA Air­ways chief exec­u­tive and gen­er­al man­ag­er Joerg Eber­hart said the air­line would assess how elec­tric air taxis could com­ple­ment its net­work and improve con­nec­tions between air­ports, urban areas and oth­er strate­gic des­ti­na­tions. The air­line is explor­ing dif­fer­ent options before decid­ing how a ser­vice might be offered to cus­tomers.

Archer said Mid­night had recent­ly com­plet­ed sev­er­al days of pilot­ed flights in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, includ­ing flights between Oak­land and San Francisco’s Mari­na Dis­trict that took approx­i­mate­ly 10 min­utes. These demon­stra­tions pro­vide an indi­ca­tion of the aircraft’s intend­ed short-route use, but do not in them­selves con­firm readi­ness for com­mer­cial oper­a­tions in Italy.

Thomas Sleightholm

Thomas is a con­tent writer for eVTOL Insights, cov­er­ing all aspects of the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty ecosys­tem. Got a sto­ry for him? Please send an email to editorial@evtolinsights.com

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