Archer eVTOL Completes California Round Trip

Archer Aviation’s Midnight aircraft completed a piloted round-trip flight between two California airports on July 30, marking a step toward the electric air taxi operations the company plans to launch under the U.S. government’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP) later this year.

The all-electric aircraft departed Salinas Municipal Airport (KSNS)—home to Archer’s flight-test facility—and landed at Monterey Regional Airport (KMRY) before making the return flight, the San Jose-based company announced on August 3. 

Archer said it flew both legs in close coordination with the FAA, with each flight taking roughly nine minutes, compared with a drive of 35 minutes or more between the two cities. The flights operated under Midnight’s FAA special airworthiness certificate, and the coordination included airspace and routing approvals, as well as flight planning with air traffic controllers at both airports.

Flight-tracking data from Flightradar24 corroborates those figures. The data shows the aircraft, registered N703AX, spent about eight minutes airborne on the outbound leg and nearly 10 minutes on the return, cruising near 1,800 feet at groundspeeds of up to 118 knots. The tracking data also shows Midnight remained on the ground at Monterey for more than two hours between the two flights.

The aircraft that flew the route is not representative of the Midnight eVTOL that Archer intends to put into service. N703AX is a nonconforming, preproduction prototype that cannot transition between vertical and wingborne flight, meaning both legs were flown as conventional, runway-based takeoffs and landings.

N703AX also carries two-blade lift propellers, a design Archer has abandoned. Chief technology officer Tom Muniz told The Air Current in June 2025 that the company will certify Midnight with four-blade lifting propellers instead, a change that reduces the vibration the two-blade design generates when the lifting rotors meet edgewise airflow during transition. 

A second Midnight prototype, N704AX, carries the updated four-blade configuration and has conducted some hover tests, though it has yet to perform a transition. To date, Archer has achieved transitions only with an older uncrewed Midnight prototype, N302AX (a model the company dubbed “Midzero”), and an earlier two-seat demonstrator called Maker.

Piloted Transition Awaits

Archer aims to complete Midnight’s first piloted transition between vertical takeoff and wingborne cruise flight in the second half of this year, before entering eIPP operations, Archer president of aircraft OEM Benjamin Lyon said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call in May. Two piloted Midnight prototypes are now in flight testing, out of an initial planned fleet of eight to 10 test articles.

“This roundtrip journey is exactly the kind of route we plan to fly with Midnight under the eIPP and in LA during the Olympic Games,” Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said in a company statement. “This mission provides a template for us to replicate with our partners across Texas, Florida, and New York as we get ready for eIPP operations later this year.”

The eIPP, established by executive order in June 2025, directs the FAA to authorize precertification operations of eVTOL and other electric aircraft in partnership with state and local governments to inform future operating rules. The Department of Transportation and the FAA selected eight winning projects in March, spanning 26 states; Archer is a partner on three of them, led by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and the transportation departments of Texas and Florida. In Florida, the company is targeting routes between Miami and West Palm Beach. Archer expects initial Midnight operations under the program to begin as soon as this year in Florida, New York, and Texas, though the company has not announced plans for passenger-carrying flights.

That groundwork extends to Los Angeles, where Archer is slated to serve as the “official air taxi provider” for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games. So far, the company has secured control of one site: Hawthorne Airport (KHHR), a general aviation reliever field less than three miles from Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX). Archer took over the master lease there in a transaction valued at $126 million, closing the first phase in December 2025, and plans to use the airport as the operational hub for its planned Los Angeles-area air taxi network.

Airport-to-airport flights remain a rarity for eVTOL aircraft in the U.S. Rival Joby Aviation, based in Santa Cruz, California, flew its S4 eVTOL prototype between Marina Municipal Airport (KOAR) and KMRY in August 2025, in what that company described as its first flight between two U.S. airports. Electric airport-to-airport flying itself is no longer novel, though: Beta Technologies’ Alia CX300, a conventional variant of its Alia 250 eVTOL model, accounts for most of the more than 100,000 nm that company’s test fleet has flown across operations in the U.S., Europe, and New Zealand. Joby and Beta have both completed piloted transition flights with their eVTOL prototypes, a milestone that still awaits Midnight.

Midnight is designed as a piloted, four-passenger eVTOL aircraft with 12 propellers: six five-blade propellers mounted ahead of the wing tilt to provide thrust in both vertical and wingborne flight, while the six lift propellers behind the wing—those at the center of the blade-count change—spin for hover and transition, then stop for wingborne cruise. Archer has said the production aircraft could fly up to 100 miles on a charge, though it is optimized for rapid, back-to-back trips of 20 to 50 miles with a recharge time of about 10 minutes in between. Archer is pursuing FAA type certification for the aircraft while it prepares for the precertification operations the eIPP allows.