Archer Chosen by Korean Air To Be Exclusive eVTOL Aircraft Partner

Kore­an Air has signed an agree­ment to poten­tial­ly pur­chase up to 100 of Archer’s Mid­night eVTOL air­craft, with the air­line plan­ning to com­mer­cialise across mul­ti­ple appli­ca­tions and use cas­es, start­ing with gov­ern­ment appli­ca­tions.

This col­lab­o­ra­tion aims to accel­er­ate the intro­duc­tion of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed air­craft capa­bil­i­ties in the near term while lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the broad adop­tion of Archer’s air­craft in Korea across mul­ti­ple end mar­kets and use cas­es. 

Archer has been mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant flight test progress with its Mid­night air­craft as part of a series of air­craft per­for­mance flight tests. It recent­ly show­cased Mid­night to an esti­mat­ed 50,000 onlook­ers at the Cal­i­for­nia Inter­na­tion­al Air­show.

Pri­or to that, Archer’s Mid­night air­craft com­plet­ed a series of per­for­mance test flights, includ­ing its longest and high­est alti­tude pilot­ed flights, fly­ing approx­i­mate­ly 55 miles in 31 min­utes and fly­ing at an alti­tude of 10,000 feet. 

Adam Gold­stein, founder and CEO of Archer, said: “Kore­an Air’s exper­tise in aero­space and their com­pre­hen­sive strate­gic vision for the future make them the ide­al part­ner for Archer. We are excit­ed to intro­duce Mid­night along­side them in one of the world’s largest aero­space mar­kets.” 

Archer’s Mid­night is a pilot­ed air­craft designed to car­ry four-pas­sen­gers and per­form rapid back-to-back trips with min­i­mal charge time between flights.

Mid­night has the poten­tial to replace 60–90-minute com­mutes by car with 10–20-minute elec­tric air taxi flights that are safe, sus­tain­able, low-noise and cost-com­pet­i­tive with ground trans­porta­tion. 

Kore­an Air, the flag car­ri­er of South Korea, is one of the world’s top 20 air­lines, serv­ing 116 cities in 39 coun­tries on five con­ti­nents with a mod­ern fleet of 163 air­craft.

Jin Kyu Lim, SVP and Head of Kore­an Air’s Aero­space Busi­ness, added: “This part­ner­ship with Archer will accel­er­ate Korea’s lead­er­ship in next-gen­er­a­tion air mobil­i­ty.

“By com­bin­ing Archer’s indus­try-lead­ing eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy with Kore­an Air’s five decades of aero­space MRO and man­u­fac­tur­ing exper­tise and strong com­mit­ment to inno­va­tion, we aim to lay the foun­da­tion for the next gen­er­a­tion of air mobil­i­ty in the Repub­lic of Korea.”