Archer’s Midnight eVTOL aircraft reaches 7,000ft, in highest altitude flight so far

Archer Avi­a­tion’s Mid­night air­craft has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed its high­est alti­tude flight to date, reach­ing alti­tudes of 7,000 feet.

In a press release issued today (Mon­day), the flight took off from Archer’s test facil­i­ty in Sali­nas, Cal­i­for­nia, and rep­re­sents the lat­est mile­stone in Midnight’s enve­lope expan­sion test­ing pro­gram.

Dur­ing this flight, Midnight’s test pilot con­duct­ed a steady climb after take­off, lev­eled off at alti­tude, then con­tin­ued to fly for 45 miles in total at speeds in excess of 120 mph.

The achieve­ment fol­lows last month’s record-set­ting flight in which Mid­night cov­ered approx­i­mate­ly 55 miles in 31 min­utes at speeds exceed­ing 126 mph.

Adam Gold­stein, founder and CEO of Archer, said: “I’m proud of the team for con­sis­tent­ly prov­ing Midnight’s per­for­mance capa­bil­i­ties while main­tain­ing the high­est safe­ty stan­dards.

“Our test pilots will con­tin­ue to safe­ly and method­i­cal­ly test Midnight’s speed, dura­tion and mis­sion pro­files to pre­pare for ear­ly com­mer­cial oper­a­tions.”

This flight marked one in a series of upcom­ing air­craft per­for­mance test flights designed to test and show­case Midnight’s oper­a­tional range.

When oper­a­tional, the eVTOL air­craft are pri­mar­i­ly intend­ed to oper­ate in and around cities at alti­tudes between 1,500 and 4,000 feet.

How­ev­er, hav­ing the oper­a­tional capa­bil­i­ty to oper­ate at high­er alti­tudes pro­vides flex­i­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing air traf­fic in high-den­si­ty envi­ron­ments and allows these air­craft to be able to oper­ate in cer­tain cities at ele­va­tion.

Togeth­er, these accom­plish­ments under­score the aircraft’s readi­ness as Archer advances toward FAA cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in the U.S. and near-term com­mer­cial­iza­tion in the UAE