Archer Appoints Tom Anderson as urban air mobility chief operating officer

Archer Avi­a­tion has appoint­ed Tom Ander­son as urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) chief oper­at­ing offi­cer to over­see its planned UAM oper­a­tions, pri­mar­i­ly focused on estab­lish­ing its com­mer­cial oper­at­ing ser­vice.

Ander­son has expe­ri­ence in air­line man­age­ment, oper­a­tions, and fleet main­te­nance, and comes to Archer after three years at Breeze Air­ways, where he served as chief oper­at­ing offi­cer.

Pri­or to that, he spent five years at ATR Air­craft as senior vice pres­i­dent for pro­grams and cus­tomer ser­vices, and pre­vi­ous­ly held high-lev­el posi­tions at Air­bus, Vir­gin Amer­i­ca and Boe­ing as part of the ini­tial launch team that took Jet­Blue from con­cept to first flights.

Ander­son said: “I have spent my entire career focussed on devel­op­ing and scal­ing com­mer­cial avi­a­tion oper­a­tions, and I’m thrilled to join Archer at this piv­otal junc­ture to help the com­pa­ny con­tin­ue to inno­vate and rede­fine the future of trans­porta­tion.

“I am look­ing for­ward to advanc­ing the com­pa­ny towards its com­mer­cial launch, cap­i­tal­is­ing on its strate­gic part­ner­ships and intro­duc­ing the pub­lic to the ben­e­fits of UAM.”

Archer founder and CEO Adam Gold­stein added: “For urban air mobil­i­ty to become a real­i­ty, it is crit­i­cal that we focus not only on build­ing and cer­ti­fy­ing a great prod­uct, but also on cre­at­ing the ecosys­tem with­in which our air­craft can oper­ate.

“Tom’s appoint­ment moves Archer one step clos­er towards bring­ing urban air mobil­i­ty to the mass­es, and trans­form­ing cities for the bet­ter.”

In April, Archer and Unit­ed Air­lines cre­at­ed a joint eVTOL advi­so­ry com­mit­tee to devel­op sys­tems and fea­tures to pro­mote wide­spread adop­tion of urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) and eVTOL air­craft, and will also act as a forum for Unit­ed to share its exper­tise on main­te­nance and oper­a­tional mat­ters.

At the time, Gold­stein said: “The for­ma­tion of this com­mit­tee is set up to lever­age United’s expe­ri­ence with indus­try-lead­ing oper­at­ing strate­gies in com­mer­cial avi­a­tion, a key tenet of our busi­ness strat­e­gy.”

Ear­li­er in April, Archer signed a Let­ter of Intent with advanced light­weight com­pos­ites firm Hex­cel to sup­ply high-per­for­mance car­bon fibre mate­r­i­al and resin sys­tems, also known as prepreg, to fab­ri­cate com­pos­ite parts for its pro­duc­tion air­craft.