Archer and United Airlines form joint eVTOL advisory committee to support adoption of urban air mobility

Archer and Unit­ed Air­lines have cre­at­ed a joint eVTOL advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, which will focus on the devel­op­ment of sys­tems and fea­tures intend­ed to fur­ther the wide­spread adop­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) and eVTOL air­craft.

It will also act as a forum for Unit­ed to share its exper­tise on main­te­nance and oper­a­tional mat­ters as Archer moves for­ward in its air­craft devel­op­ment process.

Adam Gold­stein, CEO of Archer, said: “The for­ma­tion of this advi­so­ry com­mit­tee fur­ther demon­strates Archer’s com­mit­ment to build­ing advanced infra­struc­ture to sup­port UAM at scale. The com­mit­tee is set up to lever­age United’s expe­ri­ence with indus­try-lead­ing oper­at­ing strate­gies in com­mer­cial avi­a­tion, a key tenet of our busi­ness strat­e­gy.

“We under­stand that the adop­tion of UAM is about more than just the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion of our air­craft. United’s oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence here will be invalu­able as we work towards deliv­er­ing aer­i­al rideshar­ing at scale.”

This is anoth­er mile­stone in Archer’s ongo­ing rela­tion­ship with Unit­ed Air­lines that began in Feb­ru­ary of 2021 when Unit­ed signed an indus­try-first agree­ment to pur­chase, sub­ject to United’s busi­ness and oper­at­ing require­ments, $1 bil­lion of Archer’s air­craft, with an option for an addi­tion­al $500 mil­lion of air­craft

United’s stel­lar track record in air­line oper­a­tions and its exist­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Archer make it an ide­al stake­hold­er to advise the com­pa­ny about the scope and build out of main­te­nance and oper­a­tions plans.

The Com­mit­tee is chaired by Archer’s Vice Pres­i­dent of Engi­neer­ing, Dave Den­ni­son and United’s Mauri­cio Angel, United’s Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, Unit­ed Express TechOps Strat­e­gy and Oper­a­tions. The fol­low­ing mem­bers of Archer and Unit­ed round out the ini­tial make­up of the com­mit­tee:

• Jason Ono­rati, Unit­ed’s Direc­tor of Main­te­nance Pro­grams
• Robert Bernard, United’s Sr. Man­ag­er Main­te­nance Pro­grams
• Bri­an John­son, United’s Direc­tor of Mate­ri­als
• Mon­al Mer­chant, United’s Sr. Man­ag­er UAX Engines and Engi­neer­ing
• Edward Espir­i­tu, United’s Sr. Man­ag­er Unit­ed Air­lines Ven­tures
• Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s CEO
• Tom Muniz, Archer’s COO
• Arman­do Chi­ef­fi, Archer’s Main­tain­abil­i­ty Lead

Each of the com­mit­tee chairs bring proven expe­ri­ence in avi­a­tion oper­a­tions to the group. The oth­er com­mit­tee mem­bers bring com­ple­men­tary skills in the areas of main­te­nance, cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion and fleet man­age­ment.

Michael Lesk­i­nen, Pres­i­dent of Unit­ed Air­lines Ven­tures, said: “At Unit­ed, we’re proud to be expand­ing our col­lab­o­ra­tion with Archer with an advi­so­ry com­mit­tee designed to focus on key oper­a­tional strate­gies and elec­tric air­craft per­for­mance need­ed to achieve our shared goal of sus­tain­able urban air mobil­i­ty, while address­ing the scale and sophis­ti­ca­tion need­ed to oper­ate suc­cess­ful­ly, and most impor­tant­ly, deliv­er­ing the high-qual­i­ty user expe­ri­ence our cus­tomers require.

“Assem­bling this group of indus­try-lead­ing tal­ent, and har­ness­ing the valu­able insights it yields, will be a vital step in enabling con­sumer adop­tion of eVTOL.”

Over the long-term, Archer’s goal is to work with Unit­ed to cre­ate UAM fleet sup­port lever­ag­ing logis­tics con­cepts and net­works already in use there­by cre­at­ing oper­a­tional effi­cien­cies.