Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft developer Archer Aviation has secured what could be the crown jewel of its planned Los Angeles network.
The company revealed in its third-quarter earnings announcement on Thursday that it acquired Hawthorne Municipal Airport (KHHR), located less than 3 miles from Los Angeles International Airport (KLAX), for $126 million. Archer said Hawthorne will be its “operational hub” in Los Angeles, where it hopes to fly spectators, dignitaries, VIPs, and even athletes on its flagship Midnight air taxi during the 2028 Olympic Games.
As it works toward type certification for Midnight, Archer also announced a fresh capital raise of $650 million. Priya Gupta, the company’s acting chief financial officer, said on its third-quarter earnings call that it received “substantial inbound interest” from investors as it weighed financing methods for the Hawthorne acquisition.
“We’re especially focused on winning Los Angeles, because if we can prove electric air taxis work in one of the world’s most congested, complex, and highly regulated cities, I believe we can subsequently scale the product across the U.S. and the world,” Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein said.
Similar to competitor Joby Aviation’s August acquisition of Blade Urban Air Mobility’s facilities in New York City, Archer’s purchase of Hawthorne and its 30-year lease—which it will seek to extend—gives the company critical infrastructure for its operations. Goldstein said he envisions the site as “L.A.’s Grand Central Station for air taxis” and the “centerpiece of our Southern California network.”
Archer’s SoCal Plans
Archer’s Midnight is an eVTOL model designed for a pilot to fly up to four passengers on back-to-back, 20-to-50-mile hops, cruising at up to 150 mph and charging for only a few minutes between trips. Its six electric battery packs power a pair of engines each. According to Archer, the model is 100 times quieter than a helicopter at cruising altitude.
The company has big plans for Los Angeles. In addition to being the official air taxi provider of the 2028 Olympics, it has partnered with the organizer of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Super Bowl LXI in 2027, which the city will also host.
Archer intends to launch routine passenger service beyond the Olympics using a network of electrified vertiports. According to its third-quarter shareholder letter, sites could include:
In addition, Archer is working with the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams toward potentially exclusive vertiports at SoFi Stadium—a 2028 Olympic venue—and nearby Woodland Hills.
Grand Central for Air Taxis
Hawthorne Airport is centrally located within Archer’s planned network. Per the company, it is the closest airport to downtown Los Angeles and SoFi Stadium, as well as the Intuit Dome—another Olympic site—and Kia Forum, an events venue.
According to the shareholder letter, it has potential to “directly link downtown L.A., Orange County, Hollywood, and major Olympic venues by air taxi.”
The airport is also known as Jack Northrop Field, a nod to the founder of Northrop Aircraft. It occupies approximately 80 acres, with about 190,000 square feet of terminal, office, and hangar facilities that Archer said could be expanded to 400,000 square feet. The site’s hangar footprint, it said, could be doubled.
Jack Northrop Field has a 5,000-foot-by-100-foot runway, which Goldstein said has “capacity to handle significantly more movements than it does today” and accommodates some of the largest business jets, such as Gulfstream’s G650. Its controlled Class D airspace is managed by an FAA contracted tower outside LAX’s busier Class B environment.
Goldstein said the airport will be home to the “first purpose-built eVTOL hub at the center of a world-class aviation corridor.” It will also serve as a center for other activities.
“It gives us a real central hub for all the maintenance, for all the [storage] of aircraft in the middle of the city,” Goldstein said. “When you think about launching operations, you do not really want to fly your aircraft in 30 minutes, 45 minutes from somewhere significantly outside the city.”
Archer’s investment could rise to $171 million. It has the rights to develop additional hangar space and an exclusive option—through the end of 2026—to acquire a 75 percent controlling stake in the airport’s lone FBO, Jet Center Los Angeles. Per the shareholder letter, the FBO could host a “vertically integrated platform for fuel, aircraft handling, and air taxi services.”
In addition, the company plans to redevelop up to 200,000 square feet of hangar space, extend the runway, and potentially install aircraft testing, storage, maintenance, repair, and charging amenities. Test flights will continue primarily at the firm’s facility in Salinas. But it intends to trial “AI-powered air traffic and ground operations management, in addition to other key technologies” at Hawthorne. Those could include a sensor-embedded runway and mixed-fleet “digital apron.”
“Archer’s trajectory validates our conviction that eVTOLs are part of the next generation of air traffic technology that will fundamentally reshape aviation,” said Michael Leskinen, chief financial officer of United. “Their vision for an AI-enabled operations platform isn’t just about eVTOLs, it’s also about leveraging cutting-edge technology to better enable moving people safely and efficiently in our most congested airspaces.”
Goldstein said Archer is “hopeful” that Hawthorne will be selected for the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP)—a three-year initiative to study the operational potential and safety of electric aircraft. He predicted eIPP flights would begin next summer, which could allow Archer to conduct more testing in urban settings.
“Once you get…certain hours of maturity on the aircraft, you can start to fly and get permissions to fly in and around urban environments,” Goldstein said.
The Archer CEO even floated the idea of opening the Hawthorne hub up to other electric air taxi developers, such as its charging partner Beta Technologies, making it a “centralized hub that everybody can use.”
“It could be a way to help bring the industry together and create a main point of interest for us all to use to really help unlock a city like Los Angeles,” Goldstein said.
Road to L.A.
Archer hopes for its Los Angeles network to be operational ahead of the 2028 Olympic Games. It already has a few marquee customers, with United and Future Flight Global placing orders that could translate to more than 300 deliveries.
Bolstering them are infrastructure investments like Hawthorne and the fresh $650 million in capital, which Archer said gives it $2 billion in liquidity.
The largest remaining hurdle is testing and certification. Archer says it has conducted thousands of ground tests and hundreds of vertical and conventional takeoff flights with Midnight. Still remaining is a crewed transition from hover to forward flight with a conforming prototype, a milestone achieved by Joby and Beta.
The final step in the certification process will be type inspection authorization (TIA) testing with the FAA, which could be complicated by the federal government shutdown.
At the same time, Archer on Tuesday said it boosted its patent portfolio with the closure of a $21 million acquisition from Lilium. The move gives it about 300 new patents covering ducted fans, high-voltage systems, flight controls, electric engines, and propellers that could support the development of current and future Midnight variants.