Archer Brings Its Midnight Air Taxi to Hawthorne Airport, Says FAA Has Cleared L.A. Flights

The electric aircraft will fly from a former Northrop hangar within weeks as Archer builds toward LA28, even as its quarterly loss more than doubled to $274.6 million.

By Herald Staff · Nov. 10, 2026, 11:30 AM ET

Illustration of an art deco aircraft hangar at a South Bay airfield at dusk, its open doors glowing with warm light around a sleek electric air taxi with several small rotors, as a runway lined with blue lights leads toward the downtown Los Angeles skyline under an orange and violet sky. — Archer says its first Midnight air taxi is now based in a former Northrop hangar at Hawthorne Airport, with piloted flights over Los Angeles expected in the coming weeks.

HAWTHORNE — Archer Aviation has moved its first Midnight electric air taxi to Hawthorne Airport and says it now has the federal clearance it needs to start flying the aircraft over Los Angeles "in the coming weeks," the company told shareholders Monday, as it reported another quarter of heavy losses on the way to a planned launch for the 2028 Olympic Games.

The Federal Aviation Administration issued Midnight a Market Survey Special Airworthiness Certificate, Archer said in its third-quarter shareholder letter. The company says the certificate lets it fly the four-passenger, all-electric aircraft with a pilot in L.A. and work toward passenger trials under the U.S. Department of Transportation's eVTOL Integration Pilot Program and as part of LA28, ahead of full FAA type certification. Aviation Week reported that additional Midnight prototypes are in final assembly for flight testing.

A Northrop Hangar and a Fast-Changing Airport

The aircraft will fly out of a Hawthorne hangar that Archer says once served as the world headquarters, original office and hangar of Jack Northrop's Northrop Corporation. Archer took control of the airport's master lease about a year ago and has run the airport and its fixed-base operator for almost a year, the letter says. In that time, the company says, it has upgraded the terminal building, brought electric aircraft charging to the field and begun building 11 new hangars.

"Los Angeles is where we are writing the blueprint for every city that follows," Archer wrote. The company says its commercial and infrastructure teams are assembling an L.A. network with planned vertiports connecting SoFi Stadium, USC and private aviation terminals across the region, along with a downtown vertiport at L.A. Live that it announced with AEG in August. LA28 named Archer the official air taxi provider of the Games about 18 months ago, and the company noted that Los Angeles also hosts the Super Bowl in February.

The L.A. flights are the next leg of Archer's "No Roads" demonstration tour. The first leg, which wrapped up in October, took Midnight through seven Northern California cities and included more than 300 miles of piloted flights around the Bay Area, among them several in and out of Oakland International Airport, Dronenr reported. Chief Executive Adam Goldstein said he intends to be the aircraft's first passenger in 2027, EVMagz reported.

Losses Widen as Certification Continues

The Los Angeles milestone came alongside a quarter that showed how expensive the effort remains. Archer reported revenue of $5.1 million, driven by its first engine deliveries to defense contractor Anduril, and a net loss of $274.6 million, up from $129.9 million a year earlier. Its adjusted EBITDA loss was $178.5 million, and it ended September with about $1.35 billion in cash and short-term investments, down roughly $207 million from the prior quarter. For the fourth quarter it expects $5 million to $6 million in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA loss of $185 million to $205 million.

The market survey certificate is not the approval Archer needs to carry paying passengers on a regular basis. Midnight is in the fourth and final phase of the FAA's type certification process, the letter says, without giving a date. Archer says it is "closing in" on completing piloted transition flights, in which the aircraft shifts from hovering to wing-borne flight, by the end of the year. On the earnings call, an executive said Archer has flown more than 260 piloted test flights, over 100 of them in the transition campaign, according to Daily Cortex. Archer isn't the first electric air taxi maker to receive this kind of certificate: BETA Technologies' ALIA A250 got one in October, Dronenr noted.

Boeing Deal Nears Close

Archer also said its pending purchase of Boeing's Wisk, SkyGrid and Insitu businesses should close "much sooner" than the year-end target it gave earlier, with only one of nearly 20 government and third-party approvals still outstanding. The deal would make Boeing Archer's largest shareholder, Dronenr reported. Archer says Insitu, the maker of the ScanEagle drone, brings more than $200 million in annual revenue, which the company hopes will help offset what it is spending to bring Midnight to market.

For South Bay residents, the practical change is simple: an electric aircraft that has spent the year flying over open country and the Bay Area is now parked minutes from LAX, and Archer says it will be in the air over Los Angeles within weeks.

Original reporting by The Los Angeles Herald, drawing on Archer Aviation's third-quarter shareholder letter filed with the SEC, Aviation Week, Dronenr, EVMagz, Daily Cortex and the company's earnings call transcript, as linked above.