Archer Aviation’s all-electric Midnight air taxi has now completed several days of piloted flights in the Bay Area as part of the company’s ‘No Roads’ flight tour.
The flights, which included multiple trips around the San Francisco Bay, both took off and landed at Oakland International Airport.
Midnight’s multi-city journey toward the Bay Area began in Salinas and saw the eVTOL travel through progressively larger cities with increasingly complex airspace – including stops at Hollister, San Martin, San Jose, Mountain View and Hayward before landing in Oakland to complete multiple piloted flights over the San Francisco Bay.
Archer’s ‘No Roads’ tour aimed to showcase Midnight’s ability to operate in the complex urban airspace surrounding the Bay Area’s three international airports – San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose – which together represent one of the busiest flight corridors in the country.
In addition to demonstrating airspace integration, the flights also provided communities across the Bay Area with a chance to witness some of the potential benefits of electric air taxis firsthand, including their tendency to create minimal noise, low operating emissions, and ability to travel over the top of highways.
Midnight completed its flight from Oakland International Airport to San Francisco’s Marina District in under 10 minutes, a trip that can routinely take over an hour by car in traffic. During the multi-city journey, Midnight reached top speeds of 131 mph and flew over 200 miles across the region, flying into seven cities over a three day period.
Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer, said:The Bay Area is the innovation center of the world, but even here Americans lose multiple weeks a year sitting in traffic on bridges and highways.
Flying Midnight across multiple cities in Northern California shows we can connect communities with no roads, no traffic, and no emissions in minutes instead of hours. That's the future we're working towards bringing to the Bay Area, Los Angeles and cities across the country.
