Archer Aviation and AEG announced plans on Monday to build a vertiport at L.A. LIVE, the downtown Los Angeles entertainment district wrapped around Crypto.com Arena and the Los Angeles Convention Center. It would be the first air-taxi landing site planned for the center of the city, and it hands Archer an anchor location in one of Southern California’s busiest destinations well before the 2028 Olympics.
Under the exclusive, multi-year agreement, Archer becomes the sole air-taxi provider for the district. “Working with AEG on an iconic project like this vertiport at L.A. LIVE gives us the opportunity to continue building the infrastructure needed for Southern California to lead in the next era of all-electric flight,” said Archer founder and CEO Adam Goldstein.
The flights would run on Archer’s Midnight, a four-passenger electric aircraft that takes off and lands vertically, cruises at up to 150 mph, and produces zero operating emissions with far less noise than a helicopter. Archer pitches it for short urban hops of 10 to 20 minutes — the kind of crosstown trip that can otherwise burn an hour in Los Angeles traffic.
For now the project is early. The two companies have completed only an initial feasibility study covering land use, airspace, available electrical power, and community impact, and they disclosed no financial terms, construction timeline, or target date for the site to open.
The bigger driver is the LA28 Games, for which Archer is the official air-taxi provider. “We see this as a one-of-a-kind opportunity to add a flagship downtown location to our planned Los Angeles air taxi network ahead of the LA28 Games,” Goldstein said. The L.A. LIVE site would join a wider network Archer has been assembling across the region, with planned stops tied to the airport and stadiums such as SoFi.
The strategy is clear, even if the flying is not. eVTOL companies have produced far more announcements than paying passengers, and Archer still needs the FAA to certify Midnight for commercial service before any of these vertiports carries a customer. Community objections and the sheer difficulty of building in a dense downtown lie ahead as well. But planting a flag at L.A. LIVE, in front of a global Olympic audience, is exactly the kind of showcase the industry has been chasing — and whoever lands in the middle of Los Angeles first will help define what urban air travel looks like when it finally arrives.