United Airlines and Archer announce first commercial electric air taxi route in Chicago

Archer Avi­a­tion and Unit­ed Air­lines today announced plans to launch the first air taxi route in Chica­go between O’Hare Inter­na­tion­al Air­port and Ver­ti­port Chica­go, North America’s largest VTOL facil­i­ty at the Illi­nois Med­ical Dis­trict.

The site was select­ed because of its con­ve­nience, access and ser­vice, from which pas­sen­gers will be able to trav­el to and from O’Hare on Archer’s Mid­night air­craft in approx­i­mate­ly 10 min­utes. A sim­i­lar trip by car can take upwards of an hour or more dur­ing rush hour traf­fic.

Unit­ed and Archer’s goal is to pro­vide the Chica­go Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area with a safe, sus­tain­able, low noise, and cost-com­pet­i­tive alter­na­tive to ground trans­porta­tion begin­ning in 2025.

Chica­go is the third most pop­u­lous city in the US, a cen­tre for busi­ness, inno­va­tion and invest­ment, and home to United’s head­quar­ters. The ear­ly launch routes will focus on air­port to city cen­tre trans­porta­tion ser­vice, or ‘trunk’ routes. The next step will be to build ‘branch’ routes to con­nect to sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.

“Both Archer and Unit­ed are com­mit­ted to decar­bon­is­ing air trav­el and lever­ag­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­nol­o­gy to deliv­er elec­tri­fi­ca­tion to the avi­a­tion indus­try,” said Michael Lesk­i­nen, pres­i­dent of Unit­ed Air­lines Ven­tures.

Chica­go May­or Lori Light­foot added: “Tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion thrives in Chica­go, and this ven­ture between Archer and Unit­ed will fur­ther decar­bonise our means of trans­porta­tion. I’m pleased that Chica­go res­i­dents will be among the first in the nation to expe­ri­ence this inno­v­a­tive, con­ve­nient form of trav­el.”

Chica­go Gov­er­nor JB Pritzk­er con­tin­ued: “Here in Illi­nois, we are tak­ing bold steps to lead the clean rev­o­lu­tion, paving the way for a more sus­tain­able future for our state, our nation, and our world.

“I can’t think of a bet­ter team than Archer and Unit­ed to part­ner with as we work to ensure our exist­ing avi­a­tion infra­struc­ture can sup­port this new and excit­ing form of trans­porta­tion.

“This part­ner­ship is just anoth­er way that we will achieve our goal of tran­si­tion­ing to 100% clean ener­gy by 2050 while sav­ing mon­ey and cre­at­ing thou­sands of good pay­ing jobs in the process.”

Archer founder and CEO Adam Gold­stein remarked: “We are thrilled to add Chica­go to our grow­ing list of ini­tial launch cities as we con­tin­ue to solid­i­fy our UAM net­work plans. We are look­ing for­ward to work­ing with state and city lead­ers to bring an inno­v­a­tive trans­porta­tion solu­tion to the City of Chica­go and its sur­round­ing com­mu­ni­ties.”

Ver­ti­port Chica­go exec­u­tive direc­tor Daniel Moji­ca con­clud­ed: “Ver­ti­port Chica­go is delight­ed to par­tic­i­pate along­side Unit­ed Air­lines and Archer in rev­o­lu­tion­iz­ing intra-city trav­el in Chica­go. This part­ner­ship will inspire oth­er cities to plan for cut­ting-edge trans­porta­tion solu­tions.”

ComEd, the Midwest’s largest util­i­ty com­pa­ny, will work with Unit­ed and Archer to estab­lish the pow­er infra­struc­ture nec­es­sary to sup­port eVTOL air­craft oper­a­tions in and around the Chica­go Met­ro­pol­i­tan Area.