Midnight production aircraft completes full transition flight

At the beginning of June, Archer Aviation Inc.’s (Santa Clara, Calif., U.S.), Midnight electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft completed transition flying at a speed of 100-plus miles per hour. Archer has now
achieved transition with two different full-scale eVTOL aircraft; at ~6,500 pounds, Midnight is believed to be one of the largest eVTOL aircraft to complete transition, which is critical to being able to carry commercially viable passenger payloads.

A transition flight occurs when the aircraft takes off vertically like a helicopter, accelerates forward, transitions from thrust-borne to wing-borne flight like an airplane with tilt propellers forward before decelerating and landing vertically.

Midnight is now the 7^th full-scale eVTOL aircraft that Archer’s CTO, Tom Muniz, and chief engineer, Dr. Geoff Bower, have successfully built and flown in their respective careers. Archer’s first-generation full-scale eVTOL aircraft, Maker, successfully achieved transition in November 2022, 11 months after its first flight, and still flies regularly in the company’s flight test program. Midnight, Archer’s production aircraft, has followed his achievement just seven months later.

“Over the seven eVTOL aircraft I’ve built and flown in my career, they have gotten progressively larger as we pursued payloads that made the aircraft platform commercially viable says Bower. “Midnight is believed to be one of the largest eVTOL aircraft ever to achieve transition and one of the first that is purpose-built to carry enough passengers to be able to operate a successful air taxi business.”

Midnight’s flight test program will now continue its progress with plans to fly simulated commercial routes to demonstrate the aircraft’s operational readiness, executing high-rate flight operations, testing additional flight maneuvers that will be used in commercial settings along with continuing to expand its speed and endurance flight envelope.