Archer showcases electric air taxi operations in historic San Francisco Bay flights

Archer Aviation all-electric Midnight air taxi successfully completed several days of piloted flights across the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the company’s “No Roads” flight tour. The campaign featured multiple flights around the Bay, with operations conducted from Oakland International Airport. Beginning in Salinas, Midnight’s multi-city tour progressed through increasingly complex airspace and larger urban environments, making stops in Hollister, San Martin, San Jose, Mountain View and Hayward before arriving in Oakland. There, the aircraft carried out a series of piloted demonstration flights over San Francisco Bay.

The Northern California leg of Archer’s “No Roads” tour was designed to highlight Midnight’s capability to safely and efficiently operate within the highly congested airspace surrounding the Bay Area’s three international airports: San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose. Together, these airports form one of the busiest aviation corridors in the United States.

Beyond showcasing seamless integration into complex airspace, the flights also provided communities throughout the region with a firsthand look at the advantages of electric air mobility, including significantly lower noise levels, zero operational emissions and the ability to bypass roadway congestion, reducing journeys that can take more than an hour by car to just 10 to 20 minutes by air.

During the tour, Midnight completed a flight from Oakland International Airport to San Francisco’s Marina District in approximately 10 minutes, compared with a typical road journey that can exceed one hour in heavy traffic. Over the course of the three-day, seven-city flight campaign, the aircraft reached speeds of up to 131 mph and logged more than 200 miles across the Bay Area.

Adam Goldstein, founder and CEO of Archer commented: “The Bay Area is the innovation center of the world, but even here Americans lose multiple weeks a year sitting in traffic on bridges and 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. That's the future we're working towards bringing to the Bay Area, Los Angeles and cities across the country.”

Building on the close collaboration with the FAA, as well as state and local authorities that enabled the Northern California flight campaign, these operations have paved the way for Midnight to further demonstrate its ability to integrate into commercial air traffic environments in some of the world’s largest metropolitan areas. Archer’s next planned destination is Los Angeles, as the company prepares for operations under the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program.

The Bay Area flights represent the latest milestone in Midnight’s ongoing “No Roads” tour. On September 22, 2026, the aircraft completed a series of piloted demonstration flights before tens of thousands of spectators attending the California International Airshow. Prior to those appearances, Midnight launched the tour with multiple city-to-city roundtrip flights linking Salinas with Monterey and Hollister.

Through its Midnight aircraft, Archer aims to reshape urban transportation by replacing traditional 60- to 90-minute commutes with quiet, all-electric flights that significantly reduce travel times. Purpose-built for urban air mobility missions, Midnight is designed to perform rapid consecutive flights while producing zero operating emissions, offering an efficient and sustainable alternative to ground-based transport.