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Archer Signs Strategic Agreement With Southwest In California

Archer is currently working to complete final assembly of its first type-conforming Midnight eVTOL.

Credit: Archer

Archer Aviation and Southwest Airlines have partnered to evaluate the integration of Midnight air taxis into the carrier’s operations across California.

The new agreement will see the two companies collaborate on a concept of operations that “lays the foundation” for the use of the four-passenger Midnight to provide seamless shuttle services between FBOs served by Archer and the 14 airports in California served by Southwest, the state’s largest carrier by traffic volume, Archer says.

The Midnight air taxis will be operated by Archer on behalf of Southwest, a company spokesperson confirms.

“The vision is a door-to-door journey in California, basically anywhere, in under three hours,” Archer’s CCO Nikhil Goel tells Aviation Week. “Imagine you live in Santa Monica and you’re going to Napa [County]. Today, you’d have to go to LAX, fly to SFO and then all the way up to Napa—it would probably take around five hours, realistically. So, the vision here is you just take an Archer from our Atlantic [Aviation FBO] location in Santa Monica, fly up to Burbank and hop on your Southwest flight. You then fly to SFO and take a Midnight from our Signature [Aviation FBO] location there up to our Atlantic location in Napa. You could do that in three hours on a compressed timetable.”

The partnership with Southwest complements the startup’s existing partnership with United Airlines by concentrating on medium-sized, non-hub airports that Southwest specializes in, while teaming up with United to concentrate on large hub airports in major metro areas.

“It’s really exciting when you consider an airport like Burbank where you can be door-to-gate in four minutes–that might be a place where we would think about doing the integration really tightly,” Goel says. “When you pair that with our [San Francisco] Bay Area network, and our Atlantic and Signature FBO networks, you can start to really quickly piece together a pretty dense network across California.”

“We’re going to be taking advantage of what is really Southwest’s key to market penetration–being able to take over those very convenient, smaller airports that other folks don’t fly out of like Burbank and San Jose,” Goel says. “It’s a great opportunity for us to offer more flexible travel options while doing things the Southwest way, staying focused on providing a cool customer experience that is low cost.”

News of the Southwest partnership comes as Archer is working to complete assembly of its first type-conforming Midnight prototype ahead of the start of planned certification flight testing later this year.

Ben Goldstein

Based in Boston, Ben covers advanced air mobility and is managing editor of Aviation Week Network’s AAM Report.