“Archer Midnight Aircraft Completes Longest Piloted Flight to Date of 55 Miles”

Archer Avi­a­tion announced this week, the Mid­night air­craft suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its longest pilot­ed flight to date, fly­ing approx­i­mate­ly 55 miles in 31 min­utes at speeds exceed­ing 126 mph, reports a press release. 

The flight took place at Archer’s flight test facil­i­ty in Sali­nas, Cal­i­for­nia, in front of Unit­ed Air­lines’ CFO, Mike Lesk­i­nen, who led ear­ly invest­ment in the com­pa­ny. Tri­al flights in the pre­ced­ing week reached speeds of near­ly 150 mph over a vari­ety of pat­terns. 

The release states, “This lat­est achieve­ment marks anoth­er major mile­stone in Archer’s enve­lope expan­sion pro­gram as the com­pa­ny advances toward FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the U.S and near-term com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion in the UAE.”

The flight was con­duct­ed as a con­ven­tion­al take­off and land­ing mis­sion. Four of Archer’s test pilots are now reg­u­lar­ly con­duct­ing flights in Mid­night, under­scor­ing the program’s con­tin­ued progress and matu­ri­ty.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, com­ment­ed, “I was proud to be on the tar­mac with the team for this flight. Cross­ing the 50-mile mark at speed is anoth­er clear step toward com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion which shows the matur­ing of our pro­gram.”

Mike Lesk­i­nen

Mike Lesk­i­nen, Exec­u­tive VP and CFO of Unit­ed, added, “I’ve been a long­time sup­port­er of bring­ing sus­tain­able forms of avi­a­tion to mar­ket. Con­grat­u­la­tions to the Archer team on achiev­ing this mile­stone flight. I was impressed by how qui­et the air­craft was.”

The Test Pilot for this flight shared on social media, “Through­out the thir­ty-minute flight, the air­craft per­formed con­sis­tent­ly with pre­dictable han­dling. It was a beau­ti­ful day to be behind the con­trols.”

This mile­stone fol­lows a series of key devel­op­ments in Archer’s com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion roadmap, includ­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of its man­u­fac­tur­ing ramp through­out the U.S and the acti­va­tion of its Launch Edi­tion pro­gram in the UAE.

For more infor­ma­tion

www.archer.com

(Top image: Mid­night Air­craft dur­ing its longest pilot­ed flight to date)

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