Ethiopian Airlines signs agreement to deploy Archer’s Midnight eVTOL aircraft under “Launch Edition” program

Archer has signed an agree­ment with Ethiopi­an Air­lines, mak­ing Africa’s largest car­ri­er the sec­ond cus­tomer plan­ning to deploy Archer’s Mid­night eVTOL air­craft under the “Launch Edi­tion” pro­gram.

Archer also plans to pro­vide back­end soft­ware infra­struc­ture and front-end book­ing appli­ca­tions to help pow­er urban air mobil­i­ty oper­a­tions dur­ing the Launch Edi­tion pro­gram.

Both com­pa­nies for­malised this part­ner­ship dur­ing a sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny this week in Ethiopi­a’s cap­i­tal Addis Aba­ba. The two will con­tin­ue work­ing with the Ethiopi­an Civ­il Avi­a­tion Author­i­ty (ECAA) to effi­cient­ly and safe­ly oper­a­tional­ize Mid­night.

Mes­fin Tasew, Group CEO of Ethiopi­an Air­lines said, “We are com­mit­ted to pio­neer­ing advanced air mobil­i­ty solu­tions that enhance con­nec­tiv­i­ty and dri­ve sus­tain­able avi­a­tion in Africa.

“Our part­ner­ship with Archer Avi­a­tion marks an impor­tant step in bring­ing cut­ting-edge eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy to Ethiopia. Togeth­er, we aim to rede­fine region­al trav­el and cre­ate new oppor­tu­ni­ties for effi­cient, eco-friend­ly trans­porta­tion.”

Archer’s goal is to trans­form urban trav­el, replac­ing 60–90-minute com­mutes by car with esti­mat­ed 10–20-minute elec­tric air taxi flights that are safe, sus­tain­able, low-noise and cost-com­pet­i­tive with ground trans­porta­tion. Archer’s Mid­night is a pilot­ed, four-pas­sen­ger air­craft designed to per­form rapid back-to-back trips with min­i­mal charge time between flights.

While Archer and Ethiopi­an Air­lines will pri­mar­i­ly focus on devel­op­ing an air taxi net­work in the region using Mid­night, the two are also explor­ing using Mid­night for a broad­er range of use cas­es, includ­ing eco-tourism. 

Archer Founder and CEO Adam Gold­stein said, “Last month we announced Abu Dhabi Avi­a­tion as our first Launch Edi­tion customer—today we’re fol­low­ing that up with our sec­ond, Ethiopi­an Air­lines.

“Africa presents an untapped oppor­tu­ni­ty with regards to advanced air mobil­i­ty, with a vari­ety of com­pelling use cas­es that we’ll be explor­ing togeth­er, and I’m proud to be tak­ing a big step for­ward here along­side Ethiopi­an Air­lines.” 

Archer announced the Launch Edi­tion pro­gram in Feb­ru­ary 2025, in an effort to cre­ate a scal­able com­mer­cial­iza­tion frame­work for safe­ly deploy­ing air­craft in ear­ly adopter mar­kets. It will also enable the com­pa­ny to demon­strate the capa­bil­i­ties of its Mid­night air­craft, dri­ve pub­lic accep­tance, build oper­a­tional expe­ri­ence and gen­er­ate ear­ly rev­enue. 

Alas­tair Cur­tis, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Africa, at Archer, added: “This part­ner­ship with Ethiopi­an Air­lines rep­re­sents a trans­for­ma­tive step in bring­ing sus­tain­able and effi­cient air mobil­i­ty solu­tions to Ethiopia and the broad­er African mar­ket.

“At Archer, we’re com­mit­ted to work­ing with for­ward-think­ing part­ners to unlock the poten­tial of eVTOL tech­nol­o­gy. This is just the begin­ning of a new era of avi­a­tion for Africa.”