A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;in 2007, Curt came to&nbsp;the publication&nbsp;from the broadcast industry where he was a national science and technology television reporter and producer. He writes on the FBO field, aviation finance, and sustainable aviation and occasionally contributes to&nbsp;AIN&nbsp;sister publication&nbsp;Business Jet Traveler. Curt was a member of the AINtv reporting staff that won the 2008 Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for Best Airshow Daily. That same year, he was a finalist for another AJOYA award. He earned an AJOYA for Best Business Aviation Submission in 2018 and was a finalist in that category in 2021. He received the National Air Transportation Association’s&nbsp; Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with&nbsp;Consumer Reports’ television division, CRTV, and for several local television news staffs. An honors graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, he earned a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University in 1995. Curt lives in New York State with his wife and two young sons.

Senior Editor

Curt Epstein

Total general aviation (GA) airplane billings in the first half of the year reached $10.4 billion, an increase of more than 25 percent over the same period last year, according to statistics released yesterday by the General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA). This is the first time since the first half of 2008 that six-month industry revenues have exceeded $10 billion.


While overall GA airplane shipments rose 8.9 percent from the first six months of last year, business jet deliveries decreased by 4.1 percent, falling by 12 aircraft to 283 shipments. On the turboprop side, the results were positive.


GAMA recently divided its reporting of the turboprop segment into single- and multi-engine categories. While the former showed a 3.8-percent increase year-over-year, filtering out non-pressurized aircraft reveals a 4-percent decrease among the pressurized turboprop singles. Thanks to a ramp-up in King Air production–with delivery of 24 more aircraft in the first half of this year than in the same period last year–Beechcraft single-handedly boosted the twin-engine turboprop category by more than 70 percent year-over-year.


“We are encouraged to see a strong increase in billings this quarter, but the mixed results in shipments–and the differences in performance among sectors–demonstrate that GA airplane manufacturers still face some strong headwinds as the global economy recovers,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce.

GAMA: Genav Billings Rise, but Bizjet Deliveries Slide

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