Archer Completes Piloted Midnight eVTOL Flights Over San Francisco Bay

Archer Avi­a­tion has com­plet­ed a series of pilot­ed flights with its Mid­night elec­tric ver­ti­cal take-off and land­ing (eVTOL) air­craft around San Fran­cis­co Bay, con­clud­ing the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia phase of its “No Roads” demon­stra­tion tour.

The flights includ­ed mul­ti­ple depar­tures from and arrivals at Oak­land Inter­na­tion­al Air­port, with Archer aim­ing to demon­strate the aircraft’s abil­i­ty to oper­ate in com­plex air­space shared by major com­mer­cial air­ports. The com­pa­ny said the activ­i­ty involved coor­di­na­tion with the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Admin­is­tra­tion (FAA) and state and local part­ners.

The tour began in Sali­nas and pro­gressed through Hol­lis­ter, San Mar­tin, San Jose, Moun­tain View and Hay­ward before reach­ing Oak­land. Across a three-day peri­od, Mid­night flew into sev­en cities, cov­er­ing more than 200 miles and reach­ing a report­ed top speed of 131mph.

One flight from Oak­land Inter­na­tion­al Air­port to San Francisco’s Mari­na Dis­trict took approx­i­mate­ly 10 min­utes, accord­ing to Archer. The com­pa­ny said the same jour­ney can take more than an hour by car in traf­fic, although the flight time does not account for pas­sen­ger access, ground trans­fers or oth­er parts of a door-to-door jour­ney.

The North­ern Cal­i­for­nia demon­stra­tions were intend­ed to show how Mid­night could oper­ate around the region’s three major inter­na­tion­al air­ports: San Fran­cis­co, Oak­land and San Jose. Archer also used the flights to give local com­mu­ni­ties an oppor­tu­ni­ty to see the air­craft in oper­a­tion.

Mid­night is an all-elec­tric air­craft designed for urban air mobil­i­ty, with a con­fig­u­ra­tion intend­ed to sup­port repeat­ed short flights. Archer says it pro­duces no oper­at­ing emis­sions and is designed to oper­ate at low­er noise lev­els than con­ven­tion­al heli­copters. The lat­est demon­stra­tions, how­ev­er, do not in them­selves estab­lish the aircraft’s readi­ness for com­mer­cial pas­sen­ger ser­vice.

The com­pa­ny plans to con­tin­ue its tour in Los Ange­les, where it intends to con­duct fur­ther demon­stra­tions as it pre­pares for par­tic­i­pa­tion in the US government’s eVTOL Inte­gra­tion Pilot Pro­gram (eIPP). The pro­gramme is intend­ed to sup­port the inte­gra­tion of advanced air mobil­i­ty air­craft into the nation­al air­space sys­tem.

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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