Someday, the people now paying a premium to sit in Miami traffic in the back of an Uber Black luxury vehicle may be able to pay a comparable premium to look down on that congestion from one of Archer Aviation’s electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) air taxis.
But those would-be passengers will have to wait longer to know when this transportation option opens up to them and how much they’d pay.
The San Jose, Calif.-based aviation startup announced plans on Wednesday for an aerial network around Miami and the neighboring cities of Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach. But those plans are longer on infrastructure data points than operational details.
To make the network happen, Archer has signed up Related Ross and other developers to build new “vertiports” in West Palm Beach and Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood and upgrade existing helipads by Hard Rock Stadium in Miami and the Apogee Golf Club northwest of Palm Beach.
(Credit: Archer Aviation)
Archer’s concept of operations includes service to the area’s three major commercial airports—Miami International, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, and Palm Beach International Airport—plus five smaller general-aviation airports.
Archer’s press release includes a plug for the project from Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. “We’re a city that attracts visionaries, embraces breakthrough technology, and turns bold ideas into real impact,” he says. “For years, I’ve worked with Archer as they’ve advanced a vision for an air-taxi network that will elevate Miami’s position as a global capital for innovation and mobility.”
Suarez’s tech forecasts warrant a little skepticism. He’s the guy who suggested in 2021 that the city explore paying a portion of its employees’ salaries in Bitcoin. But Miami does have two ingredients that could juice demand for air-taxi service: particularly brutal traffic, combined with a metro system that goes to fewer places than it should.
(Miami’s Metro does run from MIA to downtown but not further east; the express bus I took from the airport to Miami Beach and back a few years ago was less than awesome, especially on the return.)
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Archer’s announcement doesn’t cite a timetable for launching service or an estimate for costs; a Wall Street Journal report on this project said flights “could begin as soon as next year” and predicted that a 30-minute hop from Miami to West Palm would run $200.
That next-year suggestion also warrants some skepticism. First, Archer needs to secure type certification for its four-passenger Midnight battery-electric aircraft from the Federal Aviation Administration. That is neither a quick nor easy exercise; the FAA’s explanation of the process says that certifying a new design can take from five to nine years.
Archer applied for a type certificate for Midnight in 2022 and says it’s in the last stages of that process. The company and such eVTOL rivals as Joby Aviation and Eve Air Mobility could also turn to a program launched by the Trump administration this summer that would allow five pilot projects featuring pre-certification “advanced air mobility” aircraft.
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(Joby sued Archer on Nov. 19, alleging that Archer recruited one of its executives to steal trade secrets and disrupt a pending exclusive deal with a property developer. Archer denies those claims.)
Archer, which reported a net loss of $130 million on $45 million in income in its 2025 Q3 earnings report, is also moving to launch service in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In the US, it recently inked a deal to be the exclusive air-taxi provider for the 2028 Olympic games in Los Angeles, but aviation experts remain skeptical about the odds of a fleet of air taxis flitting across the skies over LA in three years.
This spring, Archer also announced a similar set of plans in cooperation with United Airlines, an investor in the firm, to launch service between vertiports in Manhattan to nearby airports. And in 2023, Archer and United revealed comparable plans for air-taxi rides between downtown Chicago and O’Hare International Airport by 2025. That initiative has yet to happen.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line trains can get you from ORD to the Loop in under 45 minutes for $5.
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
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