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

Though the Super Bowl is typically counted on as a magnet for private aircraft, this year’s turnout at New York City-area airports proved in many cases to be disappointing. Teterboro (N.J.) Airport, which was expecting a sellout, still had space available on game day, with some FBOs there receiving traffic that was just half to one-third of their aircraft reservations. Westchester County Airport in White Plains, N.Y., which had expected to receive overflow traffic, reported only 14 late-night departures after the game.


At last year’s championship in New Orleans, as much as one-third of the business aircraft came from the New York/New Jersey area, a fact that clearly affected traffic this year. Other factors were the threat of inclement weather, which could have changed the game date; tight security; policies from local authorities that forbade private limousine drop-offs and pick-ups at the stadium; a strict aircraft reservation system at Teterboro; and game-day temporary flight restrictions.


“You just add all that up and I think at some point the customers mentally punched out and said, ‘You know what, we’ll go next year,’” Million Air president Roger Woolsey told AIN. His company’s White Plains facility received less than 20 percent of the private aircraft traffic it was expecting, he added.

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