Basic math: $1,000,000,000 / 200 = $5,000,000 --- that just doesn't add up, given that this aircraft isn't worth $5 million unless it's the only surviving museum piece 100 years from now.

Aki, the "billion" has 2 protocols ; the original was a million millions, but seems to have been superceded by the thousand million.

Do not forget that within the $1B the company making the plane needs to take home a profit to keep producing planes or is this a one deal and done?

@riczero-b : That’s exactly what Aki said, one thousand million divided by 200 is 5 million a piece :) Unless he’s edited it since your comment....
Anyhoo, I agree totally and was just about to write the same thing. It must be an investment partnership deal with dividend returns as there is no way to make your ‘investment’ back on a $5M taxi, no matter how cool or quick.

Perhaps I missed it in the article, but I don't see data on the Maker's passenger capacity ... certainly a key bit of info. Dr. Google provided this answer:
Capacity: 4. Cruise speed: 150 mph (241 km/h) Range: 60 miles (nearly 100 km) Propellers: 12.
And as others have inferred, it would likely take more than 4 persons per trip, even if all were paying customers rather than one pilot (and possibly a co-pilot, too?).

That chart seems not just optimistic but also a tad biased considering it's apparently assuming 4 passengers in the Archer vehicle and only one in all the others. If that's the quality of their math in general, I'm not confident. Does United have to put in any cash up front at all, or just some of their otherwise-idle planning staff?

Anyone who has waited for an Uber pickup..more than an hour... knows those numbers comparing (FSM forbid) personal transport ownership (yeeGHAST! Cast ye out, devil!) are not realistic.

This push to "not own" anything is summarily anti-human and thus *suspect*.

The truth is: monthly reoccurring revenue is what corporations want... because it removes the need for planned obsolescence *AND* avoids shrink-wrap death (sell an item once without being able to capture capital continuity).

I love these designs but the business models required to make them viable do not accommodate non-city-dwellers. For sure there will be winners but it seems we are still looking for vtol convenience for a broader audience than Manhattan/LA/BayArea "users".

Just like predicted ! This revolution has begun, and from here it will only move ONE way...FORWARD !

Well done Archer and United Airlines.

@SteveMC
This is the first big scale order, it's not all about making profit from the get go, it's about pushing the industry forward, profit will follow in many ways, not solely the taxi service itself, but the services related to it's existence and industry construction.

The exposure they will receive will be huge and everything associated with the Air taxi industry will develop and evolve be4cause the helped make it happen. THEY are a part of making this infrastructure materialize, they will reap the benefit of it in the long run ! Well done to both parties !

@

Why does it take the helicopter 7 minutes to JFK but the Archer 22 minutes?

The statement that it will have "remote supervisors available to take over the sticks if there's a problem with the computers." I wonder how you can control something remotely without an on-board computer? The best this latest VTOL pipe dream can hope for is "a bunch of new toys for the top end of town."