Air taxi operator to start demoing flights above LA. Will full service be ready by 2028?

In the coming weeks, you might see an experimental aircraft that looks like a cross between a small plane and a helicopter flying above Los Angeles.

It’s an air taxi.

Archer Aviation, one of the companies jockeying to capture its place in the emerging electric air taxi industry, announced Monday it will soon begin flying its aircraft, initially without passengers, in L.A.

The company’s leadership says the flights are the most significant step yet in a race to introduce electric flying taxis to Southern California skies in time for the 2028 Olympics.

"Los Angeles is where we are writing the blueprint for every city that follows," said Adam Goldstein, the founder and CEO of Archer Aviation, on a call with investors Nov. 9. 

LA28 has named Archer the “official air taxi provider” for the Olympics.

Archer Aviation's upcoming activity in L.A., which will be anchored out of Hawthorne Airport, is meant to showcase its aircraft, known as Midnight, ahead of the Games and give the company an opportunity to learn about the region’s airspace. The company is working with the Federal Aviation Administration to determine where and under what conditions its aircraft can fly. In 2027, Goldstein said the company plans to include non-paying passengers on its flights.

But whether air taxis will be ready for 2028 is still to be determined. There are several steps for Archer before its aircraft can begin commercially carrying people around L.A.

Chief among those hurdles is approval from the FAA that the design of its aircraft, known as Midnight, meets safety and regulatory standards.

Archer's founder Adam Goldstein speaks during the International Paris Air Show at the Paris-Le Bourget Airport in 2023.

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LA was always the goal

Archer’s air taxis are a new form of aircraft that operate on electric power and have multiple rotors, unlike a traditional helicopter, and are designed to eventually takeoff vertically, rather than on a runway like a typical plane.

The potential for this type of aircraft flying in Los Angeles has been years in the making.

Last year, Archer Aviation acquired the master lease for Hawthorne Airport, and it has begun construction on 11 new hangars there.

Before that, LA28 announced its partnership with Archer, painting a vision of air taxis taking off and landing near Olympic venues including SoFi Stadium and the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. That plan would require installing “vertiports” in key locations. Vertiports are landing sites that allow electric vehicles to take off vertically rather than on a runway.

In August, Archer said it was advancing that vision, announcing plans to build its first vertiport in downtown Los Angeles at L.A. Live, the site of a number of Olympic and Paralympic competitions.

The LA28 Olympic cauldron is lit during a ceremonial lighting at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles on Jan. 13, ahead of the launch of ticket registration.

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That plan, too, still has a number of steps left to become a reality. According to a press release, Archer and AEG, which owns and operates L.A. Live, are now reviewing “operational approach and guest experience” for the project. It’s also not clear what zoning permits the companies might need to secure. LAist asked L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ office about land use rules for vertiports in the city of Los Angeles but did not receive a response.

In a sign of all the work still left to do, an Archer air taxi shown off at the L.A. Live news conference this summer didn’t fly in: It was delivered via truck.

Big hurdles ahead

As Archer moves forward with conducting flights and investing in air taxi infrastructure, its key challenge before introducing air taxis commercially remains securing “type certification” from the FAA.

“This is a rigorous, aircraft-specific process involving engineering analysis, testing, and FAA findings of compliance,” Susan Shaheen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, told LAist in an email.

When Goldstein, Archer’s CEO, announced Monday that the company would launch flights in L.A., he signaled that it was a sign that Archer was close to that goal.

“This is undoubtedly our most important commercialization milestone to date,” he said.

Some observers were more tepid about the significance of the announcement.

Adrian Norris, who has an independent aerospace consultancy, said that the kind of certificate Archer Aviation received to start flying its aircraft in L.A. is used to demonstrate experimental aircraft to investors, press and potential customers.

“For a company which has got as much money as Archer, I don’t see it as a big milestone,” Norris said. “In fact, I don’t see it as a milestone.”

According to its latest earnings report, Archer Aviation has nearly $1.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand.

Norris also pointed to how Archer’s flights in the coming weeks won’t demonstrate the vertical take off and landing configuration of Midnight. Rather, the plane will take off more traditionally, using a runway at the Hawthorne Airport.

“They haven't yet demonstrated, publicly at least, that the aircraft can take off vertically and then transition into horizontal flight with a pilot on board,” Norris said.

Public perception

If Archer can secure FAA type certification ahead of the Olympics, it won’t mean L.A. has the equivalent of Ubers in the sky in less than two years' time. Instead, aviation experts told LAist that the Games present an opportunity to showcase this new mode of potentially controversial transportation to the public, likely by offering actual rides to a select few.

“It’s a big stage, it’s an international stage,” said Josh Metz, executive director of DART, a nonprofit working on workforce preparation for this new aviation industry, about the Games. “Will your everyday Joe be riding in the air taxi to the Olympics? You know, I think that's probably unlikely.”

The question is if Angelenos will welcome air taxis or push back against them.

The company has positioned its aircraft as a game-changing fix to L.A.’s omnipresent congestion.

“Within the next couple of weeks, people will start to see Midnight flying overhead in L.A. as they’re stuck in traffic,” Goldstein said on Monday.

The electric aircraft are also expected to be much quieter than the helicopters that L.A. residents are accustomed to hearing droning overhead.

“Compared to helicopters, it's very obvious that this type of new aircraft generates much less noise,” said Seongkyu Lee, a professor in UC Davis’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, who has studied the noise output of these aircraft. “So that's very important in terms of public acceptance.”

Darlene Yaplee, co-founder of a group called the Aviation-Impacted Communities Alliance, told LAist that how people react to air taxis will depend on how the aircraft change their experience of their communities. She named a number of potential problems, like noise, the location of vertiports and even the look of the air taxis in what would otherwise be an open sky.

“So all of a sudden everyone's gonna be experiencing these impacts, and you're not gonna be necessarily living [near] an airport,” she said.

Yaplee said people will be able to turn to local governments to resist air taxis in their communities.

How Archer’s flying taxi is received may also depend on who can actually ride in it.

Jaafar El-Awady, professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, said an air taxi ride could cost anywhere from $150 to $500 or more per person for a one-way ride.

“My skepticism concerns the expectation that these services will become routine transportation for the broader public,” El-Awady wrote in an email. “A successful premium air taxi business would not, by itself, demonstrate that we have created an affordable alternative for most commuters or a meaningful substitute for mass transportation.”