Archer Aviation, an electric aircraft start-up company, has announced a partnership with Atlantic Aviation and together the two companies will begin the development of electric aircraft infrastructure at Atlantic’s existing assets, including Santa Monica Municipal Airport (SMO).
San Jose-based Archer has been developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft since 2018 and Texas-based Atlantic is a leading fixed-base operator (FBO) network and aviation services provider. With their combined resources, they aim to establish an air taxi service that utilizes existing assets at specific locations. Early launch markets will focus on highly congested cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Miami.
Atlantic and Archer anticipate launch of service across these initial locations in 2025 and subsequent expansion of services to other locations across Atlantic’s portfolio as availability of Archer’s eVTOL aircraft increases.
“We’re building a vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, capable of carrying four passengers and a pilot plus a little bit of luggage and it’s 100% all-electric,” Nikhil Goel, Chief Commercial Officer at Archer Aviation says. “It can take off vertically, like a helicopter, but then it flies forward on a wing, just like a normal airplane. The reason that’s really important is that helicopters are very loud and they’re tremendously expensive. The aircraft we’re building, they’re 100 times quieter than helicopters,” he added.
“They’re fully redundant, meaning there’s no part on the aircraft that if it were to fail would cause the flight to fail. And so that allows it to be much safer than a helicopter. And it’s very affordable. So a flight from Santa Monica to Malibu for example, or Santa Monica to Orange County would cost just as much as an Uber if not a little bit less,” Goel says.
