Archer receives $10 million pre-delivery payment from United Airlines for 100 of its eVTOL aircraft

Archer has received a $10 mil­lion pre-deliv­ery pay­ment from Unit­ed Air­lines for 100 of its ini­tial pro­duc­tion eVTOL air­craft.

The start­up, led by CEO Adam Gold­stein, has said the pay­ment rep­re­sents a water­shed moment for the eVTOL indus­try, val­i­dat­ing con­fi­dence in the com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy air­craft. Unit­ed is mak­ing the deposit on 100 of Archer’s pro­duc­tion air­craft, which it agreed to pur­chase in 2021.

Com­ment­ing on this lat­est news, Gold­stein added: “I am incred­i­bly proud of the entire Archer team as we reach this mile­stone in our part­ner­ship with Unit­ed Air­lines. To receive a cash deposit is val­i­da­tion of Archer’s achieve­ments to date, not only with flight test­ing and prod­uct devel­op­ment, but also a great sig­nal of con­fi­dence in our roadmap to com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion. We’re thank­ful to Unit­ed for their con­tin­ued part­ner­ship as we ush­er in this new era in air trav­el.”

Archer recent­ly com­plet­ed its pro­duc­tion aircraft’s Pre­lim­i­nary Design Review (PDR) and is now advanc­ing to the next stage of its devel­op­ment and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion efforts. The PDR is a metic­u­lous review of the air­craft design to ensure the pro­gram is on track and the design is mature enough to pro­ceed to the next devel­op­ment phase and kick-off of pro­duc­tion of long lead time hard­ware.

The PDR lays out all aspects of the aircraft’s spec­i­fi­ca­tions and man­u­fac­tur­ing require­ments, nec­es­sary pre-con­di­tions for deter­mi­na­tions that the design is fea­si­ble for reg­u­la­to­ry com­pli­ance and viable to bring to mar­ket. United’s deci­sion to place a deposit for 100 of Archer’s eVTOL air­craft sig­nals its desire to be one of the first air­line oper­a­tors in the USA to bring eVTOL air­craft to mar­ket.

Michael Lesk­i­nen, Pres­i­dent of Unit­ed Air­lines Ven­tures, added: “This announce­ment marks a new impor­tant phase in our rela­tion­ship with Archer, and our com­mit­ment to eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy. We are wit­ness­ing an inflec­tion point where con­sumers, busi­ness­es, and pol­i­cy­mak­ers are all aligned to pri­ori­tise tech­nol­o­gy that reduces the impact of cli­mate change.

“Unit­ed Air­lines Ven­tures has invest­ed in a diverse ros­ter of com­pa­nies work­ing in sup­port of our goal to reach car­bon neu­tral­i­ty by 2050, with­out the use of tra­di­tion­al car­bon off­sets. We believe eVTOLs have the poten­tial to both help achieve car­bon-neu­tral trav­el and serve as an inno­v­a­tive new tool to change how Unit­ed cus­tomers expe­ri­ence com­fort, con­ve­nience, and effi­cien­cy dur­ing their com­mutes with­in cities across the globe.” 

In the last year, Unit­ed and Archer have con­tin­ued work­ing close­ly togeth­er, recent­ly form­ing a Joint eVTOL Advi­so­ry Com­mit­tee to col­lab­o­rate on eVTOL main­te­nance and oper­a­tional mat­ters. Com­mit­tee mem­bers include Archer’s oper­a­tions and main­te­nance lead­er­ship, as well as lead­er­ship from United’s main­te­nance, mate­ri­als, and engi­neer­ing groups.