Archer Midnight Finally Flies With a Pilot But Forgets The Most Important Part
Image Credit: Archer Aviation.
Well, it's happened. The future we were all promised in sci-fi movies and childhood cartoons has edged one tiny, hesitant step closer. Archer, one of the front-runners in the race to fill our skies with electric air taxis, has finally put a pilot in the cockpit of its magnificent "Midnight" eVTOL. A momentous occasion! A landmark in aviation history! Except for one small, slightly hilarious detail: for its first piloted flight, the electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft… didn't take off vertically.
This cutting-edge machine, designed to ascend straight up from a helipad like something out of The Jetsons, instead trundled down a runway and took off like a perfectly ordinary airplane. Can you imagine Seth Brundle inventing a teleportation device but, for its first demonstration, walking across the room from one telepod to the other? I'm pretty sure Ronnie Quaife wouldn't be impressed, and you have to admire the sheer, deadpan comedy of it.
Image Credit: Archer Aviation.
Let's get familiar with the star of our show. The Archer Midnight is a handsome five-seat air taxi. The whole point of its existence is to let you and four of your poshest friends soar majestically over the traffic jams that plague the rest of us mortals. It's the kind of machine you'd expect to see a Bond villain step out of, right before revealing his plan for world domination from a lair atop a volcano.
To achieve its sky-tearing ambitions, the Midnight employs a frankly bonkers number of propellers. It has twelve of them mounted along its high-mounted wing. Six at the back are fixed in place, pointing skyward, seemingly in a state of permanent surprise. The six at the front, however, are the real party trick. These five-bladed props can tilt. They start by pointing up to lift the aircraft vertically, then pivot forward to propel it at a target speed of 150 miles per hour. It's a very complex ballet of aerodynamics and electric power, and I desperately want a go.
Image Credit: Archer Aviation.
But back to this historic flight. In the hot seat for the first time was Archer's Chief Test Pilot, Jeff Greenwood. With a background that includes 13 years in the Marine Corps, he's exactly the sort of guy you want with their hands on the controls of a multi-million-dollar prototype. And what was his grand, pioneering mission? To test the "robustness of Midnight's landing gear" during a conventional take-off.
I'm not mocking the importance of strong landing gear, mind you. It's generally considered a vital component of a successful flight, particularly the "landing" part. But you can't deny the irony. Mr. Greenwood reported that flying the real thing "felt just like flying the simulator." I should jolly well hope so! That's the entire purpose of a simulator, isn't it? If it felt wildly different, a lot of very clever people would be having a very bad day. Still, he did get the beast up to 125 miles per hour and over 1,500 feet, so this was more than just a taxi test.
Image Credit: Archer Aviation.
Before you accuse me of being overly cynical, let me be clear. The Midnight can and has performed the magic vertical lift-off. We saw a video of it hovering with no one aboard in late 2023, and it has also successfully performed the all-important transition from vertical hover to wing-borne forward flight. That maneuver is the holy grail for these eVTOLs; it's the aeronautical equivalent of juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle.
This runway-based jaunt wasn't a step backward, but a carefully planned step sideways. This is all part of the painfully tedious, but utterly necessary, process of certification. Archer, which was founded back in 2018 and has been testing prototypes for years, is methodically ticking every box required by the authorities. They're gathering data on every aspect of flight, making sure this thing is as safe as houses before they start selling rides. It's the sensible, grown-up thing to do. It's just not very dramatic.
Image Credit: Archer Aviation.
Archer's CEO, Adam Goldstein, even spun this into a positive, noting that having both vertical (VTOL) and conventional (CTOL) capabilities is a "strong differentiator." In non-corporate speak, that means it's versatile. Got a helipad on a skyscraper? Go vertical. Got a small runway in the countryside? Use that. It's a clever bit of built-in redundancy that also enhances safety.
And the grand plan is certainly ambitious. Archer has already been tapped as the "Official Air Taxi provider" for the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Los Angeles. Thanks to Midnight, instead of spending half a day stuck on the freeway trying to get to the stadium, you could just hop in and be there in minutes. With a projected range of around 100 miles, it's perfect for those cross-city dashes.
I may poke a bit of fun at an eVTOL practicing to be a normal plane, but the reality is this is a massive stride forward. A human is now flying the Midnight, and the program is rocketing ahead. The dream of electric, on-demand air travel is being built, one cautious, methodical, and occasionally runway-dependent test flight at a time. It may not be the spectacular vertical leap into the future we were all hoping for this week, but it was a leap nonetheless.
