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

To commemorate the launch of the first moon landing 50 years ago this month, an international team of pilots at the controls of a Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER is attempting to break the polar circumnavigation of the Earth record for any aircraft. The ultra-long-range twinjet took off this morning at 9:32 a.m. from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the same time and location where the Apollo 11 launch took place in 1969&nbsp;and is required to finish there according to the sanctioning bodies Féderátion Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) and the Guinness Book of Records.

 


If successful, the approximately 48-hour mission&nbsp;will cross over both poles, breaking an 11-year-old FAI record for average speed set by Captain Aziz Ojjeh in a Bombardier Global XRS&nbsp;and the Guinness record based on minimum time set&nbsp;in 1977 by a Pan Am Boeing 747SP.

 


This attempt will cover 22,422 nm and require three refueling stops, which are being planned with race-car pit stop efficiency in Kazakhstan, Mauritius, and Chile. Among the crew is mission director Captain Hamish Harding, chairman of Action Aviation; former U.S. Air Force test pilot, space shuttle astronaut and former commander of the International Space Station (ISS) Col. Terry Virts; and Col. Gennady Padalka, Mir and Soyuz cosmonaut, ISS commander and holder of the record for most days in space by any human.

G650 Crew Attempts Record Polar Circumnavigation

Dubbed "One More Orbit," the flight launched at the same time and location as the Apollo 11 mission a half century ago.

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