“Archer Aviation’s First Middle East Flying Taxi Trials to Begin in UAE This Summer”

Archer Avi­a­tion begins its first Mid­dle East fly­ing taxi tri­als at Al Ain, UAE in a few months time, writes the khaleejtimes.com. The tests will start ahead of the roll-out of a full ser­vice at the end of this year.

While the lat­ter sounds a very opti­mistic aim, Adam Gold­stein, Founder and CEO of Archer, told the news web­site, “The tri­al phase will begin dur­ing this year’s third quar­ter. We’ve been work­ing with the UAE’s Gen­er­al Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (GCAA) for some years, where the organ­i­sa­tion has carved out a reg­u­la­to­ry path­way to help us launch here in the UAE as ear­ly as this year.” He con­tin­ued, “We’re in the final stages of that approval. We’re going to start fly­ing first remote­ly in Al Ain before bring­ing it to Abu Dhabi.” 

Gold­stein has been attend­ing the fourth edi­tion of ‘Make it in The Emi­rates Exhi­bi­tion and Con­fer­ence’ this week. Locat­ed at the Abu Dhabi Nation­al Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre (Adnec), a full-size Mid­night Air­craft is on dis­play, where vis­i­tors can view it close-up.

Gold­stein added, “We’ll start rel­a­tive­ly small and see how the oper­a­tions will work. We will get the com­mu­ni­ties involved and show how safe and qui­et the air­craft is. And then the goal is to scale it up over time. We’ll start with dif­fer­ent points of inter­est in Abu Dhabi, and then ulti­mate­ly the goal is to be able to expand.”

Abu Dhabi Nation­al Exhi­bi­tion Cen­tre (Cred­it: Adnec)

Mean­while, the GCAA has approved Archer’s design for the planned trans­for­ma­tion of an Abu Dhabi Cruise Ter­mi­nal heli­pad into a hybrid heli­port for both heli­copter and eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions.

The aim is for the Mid­night to reduce the 2–3 hour jour­ney between Dubai and Abu Dhabi to just 20 min­utes. Reply­ing to a query about the air­fare cost, he said the tar­get prices are sim­i­lar to the high-end of a taxi rideshare. Peo­ple will be able to book a flight through Archer’s app or an app pro­vid­ed by its Abu Dhabi part­ner.

Gold­stein remarked, “There’re lots of dif­fer­ent pric­ing schemes that peo­ple are work­ing on, much like you see in the rideshare. Depend­ing on sup­ply and demand, dif­fer­ent oper­a­tors will help set the price. For exam­ple, we’re part­ner­ing with Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion, so they’ll like­ly be the ones form­ing a lot of these cost dynam­ics.” Gold­stein then com­ment­ed that the U.S com­pa­ny will begin assem­bling the Mid­night in the UAE lat­er on in 2025.

“We’ll start the assem­bly here this year. Low-scale at first, then work through and ulti­mate­ly scale it up,” he point­ed out. “Over the long term, the ulti­mate aim is to man­u­fac­ture here in Abu Dhabi and cre­ate a lot of jobs in the region. So, make this not just a prod­uct to fly here, but to be sold all over the world.”

Adam Gold­stein (Cred­it: Archer Avi­a­tion)

Gold­stein affirmed, “The UAE has incred­i­ble trade agree­ments with a lot of dif­fer­ent coun­tries, even beyond the GCC. So there’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty here to man­u­fac­ture and then ulti­mate­ly export glob­al­ly.” 

Archer’s long-term aim and Goldstein’s vision “is to cre­ate the next Seat­tle, the next Toulouse, a place where new, inno­v­a­tive avi­a­tion com­pa­nies can come and build, and cre­ate a major mar­ket in the Mid­dle East and ulti­mate­ly a whole new world indus­try.” 

For more infor­ma­tion

https://archer.com

(Top image: Mid­night Air­craft dis­played at Adnec Cen­tre — Cred­it: khaleejtimes.com)

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