Dive Brief:
- Archer Aviation and Joby Aviation reported their progress on beginning air taxi service with paying passengers during earnings calls last week. They, along with other air taxi developers, are in a race to begin such commercial flights as soon as 2025.
- Joby, which has already operated piloted test flights, “was the first air taxi company to complete the first, the second and the third stages of the FAA type certification process,” founder and CEO JoeBen Bevirt said on the company’s May 7 conference call.
- Archer CEO Adam Goldstein said on a May 9 earnings call that it is in the process of building six aircraft for the Federal Aviation Administration certification program. “The first of those is in final assembly now and on track to begin piloted flights later this year,” he said on the call.
Dive Insight:
It’s unclear which air taxi company will be the first to fly with paying passengers and where those flights will take place.
Archer, which has partnered with United Airlines, announced plans in 2022 to fly from Manhattan to Newark Liberty International Airport. Joby, in partnership with Delta Air Lines, said it plans to serve New York City and Los Angeles. Both have made deals this year in the United Arab Emirates: Joby in Dubai and Archer in Abu Dhabi. No dates have been set for the start of any of these planned operations.
The immediate goal for these companies is to achieve the necessary certifications from the FAA, a rigorous process that will allow them to fly their aircraft commercially. This month, Joby said in a press release it had completed 1,500 flights over 33,000 miles in its pre-production aircraft, including 100 flights with a pilot on board. Archer set a goal of performing 400 flights this year with its production aircraft, dubbed Midnight, and said it would begin piloted flights later this year.
The two companies will manufacture their own aircraft and see themselves providing an aerial ride-sharing business, ferrying passengers from downtown to major airports or other destinations. Archer’s business model also calls for manufacturing and selling aircraft to other users.
Archer showed potential pricing for its air taxi service in its Q1 presentation: For an average 25-mile trip from a suburb to a city, Archer estimated that an air taxi flight would take 12 minutes and cost $3.30 per seat-mile. It compared those costs with ground-based ride-sharing services such as Uber or Lyft, suggesting the same ride would take one hour on the ground at $1.50 per seat-mile.
It is questionable whether air taxis will ever be affordable for most people, said Adam Cohen, survey researcher at the Berkeley Transportation Sustainability Research Center, in an interview May 8. Cohen is author of a newly released report on planning for advanced air mobility from the American Planning Association
Joby Aviation Executive Chairman Paul Sciarra said on its call that “we don't have any updates to our broad thinking around economics.” Cities like Los Angeles, New York City and Dubai have “very difficult infrastructure to navigate on the ground,” he noted. “We're obviously very much deep in the evaluation of routes to understand price elasticity and understand demand across them.”
Joby Aviation has previously announced planned operations in New York and Los Angeles in partnership with Delta Air Lines and in Dubai, where four initial vertiport sites are planned.
“The world's cities are growing increasingly congested while alternative transportation options remain challenging to develop and implement, and world leaders have taken note of the potential impact our industry can have on their cities,” Archer’s Goldstein said.
