Archer Wraps “No Roads” Bay Area Tour: 10-Minute Midnight Flights, Then Off to LA

Archer Aviation has completed an extensive campaign of piloted flight tests in Northern California with its Midnight eVTOL aircraft, wrapping up its Bay Area “No Roads” demonstration tour. The prototype operated from a base at Oakland International Airport and is now being moved to Los Angeles for more demonstrations and operations ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games.

The tour’s numbers make the pitch concrete. Over the past week, Archer’s flight-test team took the Midnight to Hollister, San Martin, San Jose, Mountain View and Hayward — seven cities over three days, logging more than 174 nautical miles at top speeds of 114 knots (about 131 mph). FlightAware tracked the aircraft (registration N703AX) on three roughly 20-minute flights over the bay. The headline demo: Oakland to San Francisco’s Marina District in about 10 minutes, versus more than an hour by car in traffic.

Archer says the main objective was demonstrating how the electric air taxi can operate alongside other aircraft in and around the Bay Area’s three international airports — San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose — and giving residents a glimpse of 10-to-20-minute flights as an alternative to congested highways. “Flying 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,” CEO Adam Goldstein said.

The tour began at Salinas Municipal Airport at the end of July with a round trip to Monterey. With the Bay Area leg done and LA next, Archer is methodically building the operational case city by city — the unglamorous but essential groundwork before any commercial air-taxi service can launch.