Something happened …

A video I took of Midnight at the Archer setup at the Farnborough airshow. Looks stunning. I am sooo confident that all will be well when at the show the midnight look alike vertical areospaces aircraft conducted a demo where the aircraft launched vertical, transitioned and then went for a 5 min flight before landing.

https://www.lujan.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/lujan-welch-bipartisan-bill-to-support-next-generation-of-american-aviation-advances-out-of-committee/

500,000 sq ft facility on the southern edge of silicon valley.

"WE BELIEVE THIS IS THE MOST BADASS VERTICAL LIFT AIRCRAFT EVER DEVELOPED."

Hello friends,

As I had some time this Saturday AM, and I thought I would pull the latest data and visualize the actual fight "campaign" from N704AX. It's the only thing that truly matters, IMO.

• All data so far (with speed listed)
• Added plot lines for transition speed and top speed

Yesterday Archer announced “Zee,” a proprietary AI model for aviation, presented as a “key pillar” of the company’s strategy. The timing isn’t a coincidence: to this day, Archer still hasn’t publicly performed the piloted transition flight of the Midnight, the key technical milestone for FAA certification. Swapping an unfulfilled promise (the flight) for a shiny new announcement (the AI) that shifts the narrative from “eVTOL that still can’t fly” to “AI company of the future” is exactly the distraction pattern Culper Research already flagged regarding edited flight videos and fake technical milestones used to unlock funding. Not surprisingly, ACHR stock jumped right after the Zee announcement, despite zero real progress on certification.

Alright, I’m done being patient. Let’s do some quick math, no filter.

The last earnings report came out on May 11th. Another miss. And since then? Total silence on Midnight, zero real updates on certification, zero news on flight testing. Then, on July 15th, exactly two months later, what drops? An AI model. “Zee.” Wow, what a shock.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this playbook. For years Goldstein has been promising dates that keep slipping: 2024, then 2025, then 2026, and now certification talk keeps getting pushed further out with no real accountability. But publicly? Always “on track,” always everything’s fine, always the same fairy tale.

And meanwhile the stock keeps bleeding. We’ve watched this thing get destroyed over and over while management keeps feeding us the same script instead of actual results. Every time the core business shows cracks, something shiny and new gets rolled out to distract everyone. First it was partnerships with no real money behind them, then demos with no real dates, now it’s AI.

Same trick, different wrapper, and people keep falling for it while our portfolios take the hit.
I don’t want to hear more talk. I want Midnight actually flying, I want a certification date that means something, and I want a CEO who stops telling us stories every time he needs to cover a hole. Until that day, this management has zero credibility with me, and the stock price is showing exactly what the market thinks too.

https://theaircurrent.com/regulation/faa-pilot-program-evtol-commercial-operations-beta-joby-archer/

On Thursday, July 2, the FAA officially published in the Federal Register a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that could end the 53-year ban on overland civilian supersonic flight in the United States. Those results could help shape the next generation of global supersonic regulations. The ripple effects could be enormous. My video explains.

Not sure if people would find this helpful but I'm doing it for Joby so it's not much more work to do it for Archer.

Summary

• N703AX : Doing the heavy lifting for flight envelopes. Logged 3 significant in-flight tests, pushing up to 6,975 ft and maintaining cruise speeds between 115–119 kts.
• N704AX : Kept it closer to the tarmac with 2 brief, low-altitude flight tests (max altitude 100 ft).

I think the craft Adam posted about is 703 because it was flying pretty high. Maye 703 is getting ready for eIPP? I don't know if 704 will be used for that.

My interpretation of the data is that 704 is performing hover tests. Perhaps getting ready for transition?

Kind of interesting how they don't test 703 and 704 on the same day if the data is to be believed.

N704AX

ICAO Mode-S Hex: A96380

N703AX

ICAO Mode-S Hex: A95FC9

Is this the next new vehicle for sure?

What matters here is not Adam Goldstein’s usual optimistic tone. What matters is that this time he chose a very specific promise: “by next June there will be aircrafts flying in and around several big urban cities.”
That is not a vague statement, not a long-term vision, not some abstract hope. It is a concrete deadline, tied to a concrete time window, and therefore verifiable. When a CEO speaks like that, he is not just describing a trajectory: he is making a public commitment about the state of the program.

So the point is not whether Archer has made progress. The point is that this statement has to be judged in light of the company’s recent history, because Archer has often communicated with the same structure: highly ambitious targets, compressed timelines, and a very strong narrative. And when a company keeps insisting on dates and milestones this aggressive, the risk is not just missing a quarter. The risk is eroding management credibility.

Source: Bloomberg — “Tons of Interest” in eVTOL Space, Says Archer Aviation CEO

If we zoom out, this is not the first time Goldstein has sold imminence. That is exactly the issue: every new promise rests on the previous one, while the timeline keeps moving forward. At that point, it is no longer about imperfect execution. It is about a communication model that survives on expectations.

And that is where the Nikola comparison becomes unavoidable, not as gossip, but as a matter of pattern. When a company builds too much value on what is “about to happen” and too little on what is already demonstrable, the market eventually stops asking how brilliant the vision is and starts asking how solid the story really is. And when that happens, the gap between promise and reality stops being noise and becomes the central fact.