FAA publishes proposed airworthiness criteria for Archer’s Midnight eVTOL aircraft

The pro­posed Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria for Archer’s Mid­night air­craft have been pub­lished in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter by the FAA, rep­re­sent­ing a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone on the com­pa­ny’s path to com­mer­cial­is­ing urban air mobil­i­ty in the USA.

As part of the FAA’s Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process for spe­cial class air­craft, the Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria (i.e., the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion require­ments for the par­tic­u­lar air­craft) must be pub­lished in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter. Fol­low­ing the com­ment peri­od, the FAA will finalise the Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria for Archer’s Mid­night air­craft.

Archer is the sec­ond com­pa­ny to achieve this sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone, fol­low­ing Joby Avi­a­tion’s announce­ment last month.

Adam Gold­stein, Archer’s Founder and CEO, said: “From day one Archer’s strat­e­gy has always been about find­ing the most effi­cient path to com­mer­cial­is­ing eVTOL air­craft. Today’s pub­li­ca­tion of our Air­wor­thi­ness Cri­te­ria in the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter is fur­ther val­i­da­tion of our strat­e­gy and our lead­er­ship posi­tion in the mar­ket.”

Mid­night is a pilot-plus-four-pas­sen­ger air­craft and was revealed to the world last month in an open event held at Archer’s head­quar­ters in Palo Alto, Cal­i­for­nia.

Archer is cur­rent­ly work­ing to cer­ti­fy Mid­night with the FAA in late 2024 and will then use it as part of its urban air mobil­i­ty (UAM) net­work, which Archer plans to launch in 2025.

With an expect­ed pay­load of over 1,000 pounds, Mid­night will be opti­mised for back-to-back short dis­tance trips of around 20 miles, with a charg­ing time of approx­i­mate­ly 10 min­utes in between. It has a range of up to 100 miles and can trav­el at speeds of up to 150 mph.

Eric Wright, Head of Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion at Archer, added: “Syn­chro­nis­ing the design of our Mid­night air­craft with our cer­ti­fi­ca­tion efforts has long been a cor­ner­stone of our com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy. This ‘design for cer­ti­fi­ca­tion’ approach has enabled our time­line by allow­ing us to pri­ori­tise deci­sions that opti­mise our air­craft for FAA com­pli­ance.

“The FAA has been an invalu­able part­ner in this jour­ney, as evi­denced by the recent pub­li­ca­tion of our air­wor­thi­ness cri­te­ria to the Fed­er­al Reg­is­ter. This is yet anoth­er impor­tant step for­ward as we con­tin­ue to build on our grow­ing momen­tum towards Type Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and the launch of com­mer­cial busi­ness oper­a­tions.”