When top executives of Vertical Aerospace, the British maker of a four-engine electric aircraft, visited South Florida last month to unveil their version of a battery-powered air taxi for urban transportation, an American rival, Archer Aviation, was lying in wait.
Shortly before cocktails flowed at a reception for guests beneath a tent housing the plane in a Miami Beach park, Archer informed the news media that it had sued Vertical in a Texas federal court for alleged patent infringements.
“Archer brings this suit to protect the novel and award-winning design of its Midnight eVTOL, which was developed by Archer inventors through careful, brilliant design work, and to stop Vertical infringing its patented designs,” the suit declared.
Vertical executives scrambled to issue a statement denying the allegations.
“There is no bigger form of flattery when people try and do this to us,” Vertical CEO Stuart Simpson told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in an interview delayed by the litigation interlude. “It’s a pure distraction tactic.”
Whatever is decided in court, it is now clear that the nascent electric air taxi industry is emerging from an early development stage to an era of a high-stakes competition. Billions in investor dollars are at stake, and at the local, state and federal government levels, advocates say expedited action is needed to assess aircraft developed by companies worldwide for certification and to make way for a new mode of urban transportation at public airports and privately run “vertiports” in South Florida and elsewhere.
Last December, Archer took its turn at a public introduction with a debut of its six-engine “Midnight” at an old Pan American World Airways hangar in Miami’s Coconut Grove. It also announced a detailed South Florida route system that would include landing locations at several public airports, as well as at vertiports built and/or controlled by developers including billionaire real estate developer Stephen Ross.
Precisely when those proposals will become reality is difficult to calculate. A spokesperson for Archer, which is based in California, reaffirmed last week that the company plans “to begin operating Midnight this year as part of the White House’s eVTOL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP).” The company said it has “submitted applications across California, Florida, Texas, Georgia, and New York.”
The eVTOL program, which is among several pilot programs launched by the FAA and U.S. Department of Transportation, was triggered by an executive order signed by President Donald Trump last summer. The idea is to “accelerate the deployment of advanced air mobility (AAM) vehicles,” the FAA has said, asserting that the new technologies “have the potential to transform aviation, including expanding connectivity to rural American communities, reducing road congestion in urban areas, and enhancing emergency services or medical transport.”
The program would establish “public-private partnerships with state and local government entities and private sector companies to develop new frameworks and regulations for enabling safe operations,” the agency added.
And then will paying passengers begin to fly?
“People try to guess when it will happen,” said Kevin Adkins, professor of aviation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach. “I try to stay away from that. There are a lot of moving pieces here.”
Support preparations by players ranging from federal regulators to local airport operators are starkly uneven, Some would like to see decisions made much sooner than later.
“This industry is ripe with investment, it’s ripe with innovation, and it’s ripe with competition where businesses are looking to bring their aircraft to various markets,” said Kevin Cox, CEO of Vertiports by Atlantic, which has national ambitions of being part of the business, including in South Florida. “These aircraft can be transformational and we believe they will be, but they’re not transformational unless you have the infrastructure to support them.”
In Congress last month, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill to speed up the FAA certifications of aircraft that manufacturers say have been tested and are ready to fly. Last year, Trump signed a batch of executive orders to activate the industry and get the taxis airborne faster.
In Florida, the state has shown strong support, with the Department of Transportation offering test sites for aircraft in the central part of the state.
The Valo aircraft
Generally speaking, the flying machines manufactured by Archer, Vertical, Joby Aviation, and Beta Technologies, among others, look and operate similarly. Powered by batteries, they can carry between four to six passengers, depending on the model, and are operated by a single pilot. Multiple engines attached to the wings swivel into vertical and horizontal positions to accommodate a lift like a helicopter and provide forward movement.
During his Miami Beach visit, Simpson said the Vertical Aerospace version can be configured to carry six passengers. He also noted there is a barrier between passengers and pilots in the cabin for security purposes. It’s a feature, he said, that is not lost on the airlines, including American Airlines, which became a partner in 2021 and is considered by Simpson to be a launch customer.
“There is a need for a product like this given the infrastructure challenges,” Simpson said. “There are so many people who have moved to South Florida. We met some politicians around here and they really, really want to engage and make this happen. They can see how it would transform the lives of people in South Florida.”
The company, unlike Archer, does not intend to be an operator of the aircraft it makes.
South Florida operator goes ‘conventional’
Ed Wegel is a veteran South Florida aviation executive with an idea similar to Archer’s: to lay out a network of cities that would serve tourists, travelers and businesspeople who need to get from one city to another quickly.
But his company, UrbanLink Air Mobility, is not ordering planes from either Vertical or Archer. He’s leasing 10 “conventional” electric aircraft (eCTOLs) from Beta Technologies of Vermont that can land and take off along airport runways like a traditional plane. The first deliveries will come in late 2027.
UrbanLink envisions a network that includes all three South Florida international airports, as well as Tampa, Jupiter, Key West, Marathon and even Bimini in the Bahamas. The company is also looking toward the Orlando area and Sebring, where it believes it could base a number of its aircraft.
The projected price for a West Palm Beach to Miami flight: $125, which beats a widely quoted $250 price for a 75-mile luxury car trip with Uber Black.
The first electric air taxi services, Wegel believes, will be landing and taking off at airports with their conventional runways, not at vertiports.
“We think that with vertiport developments you’d have to go through FAA approvals, community hearings, and community comments,” Wegel said. “You just can’t put a vertiport in the middle of a community somewhere.”
High demand potential
Adkins, who brought 22 students and four Embry-Riddle faculty members to Miami Beach on Feb. 24 to view the Vertical Aerospace aircraft, said there is a case to be made for heavy demand in both South and Central Florida.
There are plenty of airports in both regions for the operators to use, he said. “Florida in general has a lot of attractive attributes. Up here closer to the Orlando area has a natural hub and spoke system.”
“There would be a lot of demand,” he added, particularly “from people who want to get off the clogged expressways.”
Airports, vertiports
Initial landing spots for the air taxis are likely to be Fixed Base Operations, which are service businesses that supply general and business aviators with fuel, maintenance, food, and even space for overnight sleepovers.
“Those FBO sites obviously today serve traditional aviation,” said Cox of Vertiports by Atlantic.
“We want to make sure we are doing it at sites and locations likely to be first-to-market and allow this form of transportation to [be brought to] scale,” he said.
Although UrbanLink and Archer have announced definitive South Florida route networks that include the region’s big international airports, there is scant evidence of any tangible ground-level developments that would lead travelers to believe that flights by electric taxis are imminent.
In Broward County, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International is evaluating the integration of a vertiport into a broader intermodal project at the eastern end of the airport. But there is no immediate time frame.
“Electric vertical take-off and landing/advanced air mobility/vertiport capabilities will be reviewed and evaluated as part of the design process for the proposed new eight-level Intermodal Center for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport,” spokeswoman Arlene Satchell said in an email.
In Boca Raton, the city’s airport authority last December reportedly heard from a consultant about Archer’s plans in the region.
But the authority is in the study stage and has no immediate plans to start any taxi operations, Executive Director Clara Bennett said in an email.
She said a feasibility and planning study of the Advanced Air Mobility industry is under way “to better understand how emerging electric vertical takeoff and landing [eVTOL] technologies could potentially integrate into the airport environment in the future.”
She said the authority wants to know about demand for services in the South Florida market, as well as “possible use cases for electric air taxi operations, and the types of infrastructure that could be required to support those operations over time. The effort also includes a preliminary review of potential facility siting concepts, compatibility with existing airport operations, and alignment with evolving FAA guidance and vertiport design standards.”
“Because the AAM sector is still in the certification and early deployment phase, the Authority’s focus at this time is on thoughtful, long-range planning rather than near-term implementation,” Bennett added.
The Palm Beach International Airport and the City of Fort Lauderdale, which owns Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, did not provide information by publication deadline.
The ‘end game:’ No pilots
The long-term, meanwhile, holds a possibility that that may or may not attract widespread public support.
“The end game here is more autonomous operations,” said Adkins of Embry Riddle, citing a shortage of pilots and air traffic controllers, as well as the rising cost of labor to employ them.
Last year, the Miami-Dade Aviation Department, overseer of Miami International Airport and two smaller airports in the county, entered into agreements with the University of Miami and Wisk Aero, developer of self-flying air taxis, to explore steps toward autonomous flying.
The idea is to identify vertiport sites for the international airport, Miami Executive Airport and Miami-Opa locka Executive Airport to enable Wisk to start operations.
“We’re short pilots right now,” Adkins said. “They’re expensive. They’re going to drive up the price point.”
“For this system to be realized anywhere near its full potential, automation is important,” he added. “Community acceptance is going to be a huge piece.”