Archer’s No Roads Tour Begins With Piloted Salinas-Hollister eVTOL Flight
Archer Aviation has begun its “No Roads” flight tour with a piloted roundtrip flight between Salinas Municipal Airport and Hollister Municipal Airport in California, as the company continues testing its Midnight all-electric aircraft ahead of planned operations in additional U.S. markets.
The flight, completed on September 4, marked the first stop on the tour. Midnight took approximately 12 minutes to fly each leg, compared with around 40 minutes or more by car. The aircraft reached a reported top speed of 125 mph, cruised at 3,550 feet and covered more than 40 miles during the roundtrip.
The flight follows more than 70 completed test flights by Archer in August, including an earlier piloted roundtrip between Salinas and Monterey.
Archer said the tour will continue over the coming weeks, with planned flights connecting locations including Monterey, San Martin, San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco. The company also plans to take the aircraft to Los Angeles before conducting operations under the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program in Texas, Florida and New York.
The programme is being conducted in coordination with the Federal Aviation Administration and state and local partners. The flights are intended to provide experience operating Midnight on city-to-city routes while Archer works toward future commercial operations.
Midnight is an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft designed for short-distance passenger transportation. Archer is targeting journeys where ground travel can take significantly longer, particularly in congested urban and regional corridors.
The “No Roads” tour therefore represents another stage in Archer’s flight-test programme rather than the launch of a commercial air-taxi network. The company’s upcoming flights will provide further evidence of how the aircraft performs on different routes as it prepares for its planned U.S. pilot-programme operations.
