When Los Angeles hosts the Olympics in 2028, people will likely be looking for other ways to get around the City of Angels. One company working toward that goal is Archer Aviation. It has received approval from the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate its air taxi service in Los Angeles airspace.

Founded in 2018, Archer, based in San Jose, California, is developing electric-powered aircraft with vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL), meaning the vehicle can take off and land like a helicopter and then fly like a propeller plane.

“The whole advantage here is that you can take off vertically, just like a helicopter, but with a fraction of the noise and a fraction of the cost,” said Archer’s Chief Commercial Officer Nikhil Goel Decrypt“The idea is that you can use any existing helipad or heliport in the world, and you can also use airports and runways.

“You can also build new infrastructure in areas where you couldn’t build helipads before,” he added.

The company was born from a collaboration between VTOL developers Jeff Bauer and Tom Muniz, Archer co-founders Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein, and Goel, who was previously co-founder and head of product at Uber Elevate (Uber Air), the ride-sharing giant’s planned air taxi service.

Uber Elevate was acquired by rival air taxi service Joby Aviation in 2020, with Uber investing $75 million in Joby Aviation in return.

“If you look at the trend, by 2050, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in cities,” Goel said. “That’s all great, but the roads in those cities are not going to get any bigger. There’s no room to expand the highways by another 50%.”

The obvious answer – especially in a densely populated urban environment – ​​is to go up.

“You can’t dig tunnels, you can’t build subways after the fact,” he said. “So the only real alternative is to build in the air and do what we did.”

Goel added that the company is working with United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, among others.

“We have built a robust ecosystem of partners and will continue to expand it over time,” said Goel.

The US Department of Defense is also interested in Archer. Earlier this month, Archer announced that the company had delivered the first Midnight aircraft to the United States Air Force, valued at over $142 million.

Goel said the company intends to have its Midnight aircraft in the skies over Los Angeles in the next 18 months or early 2026. Archer’s planned flight network includes locations at Los Angeles International Airport, Sofi Stadium, the University of Southern California and Orange County.

“We just announced our 10-node network that includes a lot of very prominent sports venues like SoFi Stadium,” Goel said. “SoFi Stadium is big because it will host not only the Olympics but also the World Cup and the Super Bowl. So we see a big opportunity in that.”

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.