Archer Aviation’s eVTOL prototype Midnight completed 402 test flights so far this year, surpassing its goal of 400 flights in 2024, the company announced Tuesday.
While many still reasonably view these aircraft as answers in search of a question, there is no doubt that Archer appears to be making rapid progress.
Lots of other companies are doing the E-VTOL thing and promising much but showing little. It may be that much more is happening quietly in the background. But much like the small-sat launcher market (see HBO’s ‘Wild Wild Space’), there will likely be few winners here, and much capital washed away in pursuit of unrealized visions of an unlikely future.
As a prop shop owner, I look forward to some of these things coming on-line.
You hit the nail on the head! One of the key certification costs is software (control laws). DO-178 software quality standards are tough, take time and are expensive to develop. I suspect Archer has a crack team doing the air law work.
The point of significant interest is how many actual flight hours did they achieve in those 400 flights, what is the average and mean flight time of each flight, how many test points were planned and how many were achieved? If all you are focused on is the number of flights, I suspect there will be a lot of very, very short flights included in that tally. Activity does not always equal progress.
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