Aashish Grover is the senior technical operations lead at Archer Aviation, which plans to bring electric aircraft taxis to the market in 2025.
Initially, Grover worked for Archer as a flight line maintenance technician, supporting the flight test campaign of the first prototype of Archer’s first electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft called “Maker.”
Now, on the integrated test team, he’s leading the team of technicians and building various test labs for testing of hardware and software to support the certification of Archer’s first production aircraft “Midnight.”
“All the components/LRU (line replaceable units) that will be on the production aircraft will be tested and integrated in the labs before being manufactured by the vendors,” he said.
“I’m learning a lot about the aircraft, from wire to wire, signal to signal, internal structures of LRU, how everything in the aircraft is communicating with each other and using my experience to set it up.”
Building an aircraft from scratch and getting it certified by the FAA as well as the fact that the aircraft is an electric aircraft make for an exciting opportunity, Grover said.
And that’s just his weekday job. He says he can’t stay away from the commercial airliners and airports so, on weekends, he’s an aircraft maintenance technician (A&P) for Jett Pro Line Maintenance and does on-call maintenance for various leading airlines at San Jose International Airport in California.
“Aviation is a big addiction,” he concludes.
In 2022 Grover was awarded the FAA Aviation Maintenance Technician Gold Award. He is pursuing Master of Business Administration in Aviation Management from the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES) in India, and holds a Bachelor of Science in Aircraft Maintenance Engineering from Singhania University in India, B1.1 Aircraft Maintenance Engineer License issued by Director General of Civil Aviation, India; an aircraft mechanic diploma from International Career School Canada; and an associate degree from Star Aviation Academy in India.
