Archer Aviation and AEG announced on 24 August 2026 that they plan to develop a vertiport at L.A. LIVE, the entertainment district AEG owns in downtown Los Angeles. The agreement makes Archer the district's exclusive air taxi partner. Neither company disclosed financial terms, a construction timeline, or a target date for the site to enter service.
The partners have completed an initial feasibility study covering land use, airspace, power availability and community impact, with a second phase examining operational approach and guest experience under way as of the announcement. A completed feasibility study is not a permit, and the companies named no city or federal approvals secured to date.
A downtown showcase ahead of LA28
Archer describes the site as the first vertiport announced in downtown Los Angeles. L.A. LIVE, which AEG puts at four million square feet, sits next to Crypto.com Arena and the Los Angeles Convention Center and is slated to host 19 Olympic and Paralympic sports.
The location would join a planned Los Angeles network that the company says will include SoFi Stadium, the University of Southern California and Hollywood Burbank Airport, with Hawthorne Municipal Airport as the planned operational hub. That site list has shifted over time. When Archer was named Official Air Taxi Provider of the LA28 Olympic and Paralympic Games and Team USA on 15 May 2025, the announced network cited the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles International Airport, Orange County and Santa Monica instead.
The partners said the site is planned to use charging hardware from BETA Technologies through ACES, America's Consortium for Electric Skyways, which Archer, BETA and Macquarie Capital launched on 16 July 2026 with a stated target of more than 250 sites by 2030. Archer and AEG planned to display a Midnight aircraft in a Team USA livery at L.A. LIVE from the morning of 24 August through 25 August 2026.
The aircraft is not certified yet
The plan rests on an aircraft that does not yet hold approval to carry passengers. Archer's Midnight does not have a Federal Aviation Administration type certificate, and no eVTOL has been type certified in the United States. That remains the central variable in every urban air mobility announcement: infrastructure can be planned, funded and even built, but it cannot generate revenue until the aircraft is cleared to fly commercially.
The company's finances underline how much is riding on that milestone. In second quarter results published on 10 August 2026, Archer reported a net loss of $263.2 million and $1.56 billion in cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments. It said it expected to begin Midnight operations later in 2026 under the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program.
Why downtown matters
Vertiport siting is arguably the harder half of the air taxi problem. A city-centre pad needs suitable airspace, a power supply capable of fast-charging aircraft between rotations, planning permission, and a landowner willing to host it. Partnering with a landholder that already controls a large contiguous district removes several of those obstacles at once, which is a large part of the appeal of an agreement like this one.
Whether the site opens on any particular timetable is a separate question. With no disclosed construction schedule, no service date and no certification yet in hand, the L.A. LIVE vertiport is at this stage a stated intention backed by a completed feasibility study, not a project with a fixed opening.
Sources: AeroTime. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. By James Holloway.
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