Archer Aviation wants to help New Yorkers skip airport traffic with electric air taxis

Summary

New York City is one of those places in the world where you can get a dollar slice at 2 in the morning or have a burger delivered in under 30 minutes, but you’ll still spend two hours crawling down the highway to catch a flight. Archer Aviation wants to change that with air taxis that it envisions flying passengers from Manhattan to nearby airports within 15 minutes. The startup on Thursday unveiled its proposed air taxi network for New York City in partnership with United Airlines, which would allow passengers to tack on an Archer ride to their traditional airline tickets. “We’re starting with nine core nodes,” Adam Goldstein, co-founder and CEO of Archer, told me during an interview at Casa Cipriani, a members-only club at the bottom tip of Manhattan, watching helicopters land at the Downtown Skyport. Nikhil Goel, Archer’s chief commercial officer, “So you have the three big international airports – JFK, La Guardia, Newark,” Goldstein continued. “You have the three big heliports, [including] the Downtown Skyport, and then the east and west side heliports. And then the three big regionals – Teterboro, Westchester, and Long Island Republic.” Archer Aviation’s proposed air taxi network in New York City.Image Credits:Archer Aviation Archer has shared a similar vision for air taxi networks in cities like Los Angeles. The company is still waiting on the Federal Aviation Administration to approve its aircraft – a five-seat eVTOL (electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle) dubbed Midnight – before it can even begin testing the routes it has planned. Archer also still needs to get a pilot into one of its aircraft to test-fly it. So far, the company has only flown the plane autonomously with no humans inside. Its competitors, Joby Aviation and Beta Technologies, have both piloted flights. Goldstein seemed hopeful that Archer would achieve the necessary certifications in 2026, telling TechCrunch that it would have an update about piloted flights at its next earnings call...