{"id":500991,"date":"2026-10-19T12:36:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T12:36:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/500991\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T12:36:52","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T12:36:52","slug":"archer-completes-piloted-midnight-evtol-flights-over-san-francisco-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/500991\/","title":{"rendered":"Archer completes piloted Midnight eVTOL flights over San Francisco Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"

Archer Aviation has completed several days of piloted flights with its all-electric Midnight air taxi around San Francisco Bay, taking off and landing at Oakland International Airport to show how the aircraft integrates into busy urban airspace.<\/p>\n

The flights capped the Northern California leg of Archer\u2019s \u2018No Roads\u2019 tour and built on a\u00a0flight-test program<\/a>\u00a0that has passed 400 test flights. Beginning in Salinas, Midnight flew into seven cities over three days \u2013 Hollister, San Martin, San Jose, Mountain View and Hayward before Oakland \u2013 reaching top speeds of 131mph and covering more than 200 miles.<\/p>\n

The aim was to show Midnight operating in the complex airspace around the Bay Area\u2019s three international airports \u2013 San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose \u2013 one of the busiest flight corridors in the USA. Midnight flew from Oakland to San Francisco\u2019s Marina District in about 10 minutes, a journey that can take more than an hour by car.<\/p>\n

Midnight is a piloted, four-passenger air taxi powered by 12 electric motors driving tilting and lift propellers, fed by six independent battery packs. Archer designs it for rapid back-to-back trips of roughly 20 to 50 miles at cruise speeds of about 150mph, recharging in around 10 minutes between flights.<\/p>\n

In testing, the aircraft has\u00a0flown about 55 miles (89km)<\/a>\u00a0on a single charge and reached 10,000ft, and has completed the\u00a0high-speed transition<\/a>\u00a0from vertical to wing-borne flight that is central to the design. Archer says Midnight produces around 45 decibels in forward flight and no operating emissions.<\/p>\n

\"Archer\u2019sMidnight in flight near San Francisco during the Bay Area demonstrations (Image: Archer Aviation)<\/p>\n

Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer, said, \u201cFlying 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\u2019s the future we\u2019re working towards bringing to the Bay Area, Los Angeles and cities across the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Archer launched the \u2018No Roads\u2019 tour in September ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympic and Paralympic Games, for which it is the official air taxi provider. The tour opened with city-to-city flights from Salinas to Monterey and Hollister and piloted displays at the California International Airshow before the Bay Area flights.<\/p>\n

Archer plans to fly Midnight in Los Angeles next as it prepares to operate under the White House\u2019s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP), a federal scheme for testing air-taxi operations. The program selected Archer applications spanning several states in early 2026.<\/p>\n

The company is targeting initial US commercial operations in 2026 under the pilot program, although full FAA type certification remains ahead. Archer says it was the first eVTOL developer to clear Phase 3 of the FAA\u2019s four-stage certification process and is now in Phase 4, and it already holds the Part 135 and Part 145 approvals needed to operate and maintain commercial services.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Archer Aviation has completed several days of piloted flights with its all-electric Midnight air taxi around San Francisco…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-500991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}