Anika Begay
Los Angeles is famous for its back-to-back traffic. Three events that promise to draw millions of spectators from around the world—the 2026 World Cup, the 2027 Super Bowl, and the 2028 Olympics—have prompted Los Angeles officials to look at a variety of new mobility solutions to address congestion. But they’re already behind schedule: Most of the city’s planned transportation infrastructure initiatives for the Olympics won’t be completed until 2028.
It is in this gap that Archer Aviation sees an opportunity.
The startup, which is developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, hopes to exploit the public sector’s slow pace with a private-sector solution: a network of air taxis in Los Angeles that will replace a two- to three-hour car ride with a 10- to 20-minute air taxi ride, starting in 2026.
Ahead of Archer’s second-quarter earnings conference call on Thursday, the company announced the locations of its vertiport network, or takeoff and landing points, including Los Angeles International Airport, the University of Southern California, Santa Monica, Hollywood Burbank, Van Nuys and Long Beach in Los Angeles County and Orange County.
Archer is also building a new vertiport at SoFi Stadium, which will host the World Cup, Super Bowl and some Olympic games, in partnership with Kroenke Sports & Entertainment and the LA Rams football team. Although the vertiport won’t be operational by 2026, Archer hopes to have it completed in time for the Olympics.
The Los Angeles announcement comes just weeks after Archer signed a memorandum of understanding with Kilroy Realty Corporation, identifying Kilroy Oyster Point, a 50-acre waterfront campus in South San Francisco, as a key hub in the company’s planned urban air mobility network in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Nikhil Goel, Archer’s chief commercial officer, told TechCrunch that most of the vertiports the company announced for Los Angeles on Thursday have already been built.
“LA has, I think, the most unused aviation infrastructure in the entire country, so it has airports all over the city. It has a number of rooftop helipads that are not being used today,” Goel said, noting that all Archer needs to do is install charging infrastructure and passenger facilities.
The Archer team chose the locations based on data about how people move around Los Angeles today. Archer recently partnered with Southwest Airlines, a deal that includes giving Archer access to the airline’s customer data it’s using to identify suitable locations for vertiports.
The planned 2026 LA launch will be phased in, according to Goel. He said the first year will likely look like “a handful of aircraft” flying one or two routes that offer the most value as Archer learns how to deploy its technology effectively, create good customer service and integrate with the communities it serves.
Archer wants to launch a limited number of commercial pilots starting in 2025 in six cities: San Francisco, Miami, Los Angeles, New York City, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. In the meantime, the company is racing to build enough Midnight aircraft to launch a service and get the necessary certifications from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
The Midnight eVTOL is a four-passenger electric aircraft that can travel up to 150 miles per hour and is designed for consecutive flights of 20 to 50 miles. The company says it takes less than 10 minutes to recharge between trips.
Archer is working with automaker Stellantis to build its manufacturing facility in Georgia, where it is on track to build 650 aircraft annually, starting in the fourth quarter of 2024. The startup is also building six pre-production aircraft at its small manufacturing facility in California.
Archer must also obtain type certification and production certification from the FAA before it can be released to the market. The former verifies that the eVTOL design meets all regulatory safety standards, and the latter ensures that Archer’s manufacturing processes can reliably produce aircraft that conform to the approved design and are safe to operate.
“This is all becoming very, very real. The plane is flying almost every day,” Goel said. “Not only did we do our first transition flight, but we’ve done 233 to date, and that puts us on track to exceed 400 flights for the year. It’s all starting to come together. This is not Blade Runner anymore. It’s about making it real, launching as early as 2026 and scaling from there.”
