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

Seventy percent of the 450 business aircraft operators surveyed by JetNet iQ to date this quarter believe the current market cycle is now past the low point, managing director Rollie Vincent said yesterday at the annual JetNet IQ Summit in White Plains, New York. “In seven and a half years of doing this work, we’ve never seen stronger numbers,” he told the audience. “We’ve been in the doldrums the past several years, but we’re very optimistic about what we are seeing.”

 


Paul Cardarelli, JetNet’s v-p of sales, noted that the percentage of jets on the preowned market has declined from a high of nearly 18 percent in 2009 to just over 9 percent in the most recent data, indicating a switch from a buyers' to a sellers' market. Cardarelli estimates that 45 percent of the approximately 2,000 available preowned jets&nbsp;are antiquated aircraft and unlikely to sell, indicating that the young preowned inventory is evaporating.

 


Yet, the company noted, not all was positive. The approximately 4.5 million cycles by the U.S. business jet fleet last year were accomplished by more than 14,000 aircraft;&nbsp;in 2003, fewer than 9,000 business jets achieved that number of cycles. “This is something that gives us a bit of concern about business aviation,” said Cardarelli. “We’d like to see this [per-aircraft] utilization back where it once was.”

JetNet Survey Sees High Optimism in Bizav Market

The second quarter results are the most positive since the launch of the survey in 2011.

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