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

A Qatar Executive Gulfstream G650ER has broken the polar circumnavigation of the Earth record, accomplishing the flight in 46 hours, 39 minutes, and 38 seconds. Scheduled to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission this month, <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2019-07-09/g650-crew-attempts-record-polar-circumnavigation">the flight departed NASA’s Cape Canaveral facility</a> at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida Tuesday at 9:32 a.m.—the same time as the moon mission launch a half-century earlier—and landed there this morning at 8:12 a.m., shaving 5 hours, 51 minutes, and 26 seconds off the <a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/aviation-international-news/2008-12-31/tag-global-claims-record-polar-circumnavigation">previous speed record set in 2008</a>.

 


The ultra-long-range twinjet (of which Qatar Executive is the world’s largest operator with six) accomplished the 40,172-km (21,691-nm) mission dubbed “One More Orbit” in four legs: Florida to Astana, Kazakhstan; Astana to Mauritius; Mauritius to Punta Arenas, Chile; and Chile to Florida, refueling at each stop.

 


“Qatar Executive, together with the One More Orbit team has made history,” said Qatar Airways Group chief executive Akbar Al Baker, who was on hand to greet the arriving business jet, noting many people behind the scenes worked tirelessly to make the record attempt a success. “A mission like this takes a huge amount of planning as we need to factor in the flight paths, fuel stops, potential weather conditions and make plans for all possibilities.” The record flight, a first for Qatar Executive will be detailed in an upcoming documentary.

 


“We did this during the 50th-anniversary&nbsp;celebrations of the Apollo moon landing and the 500th&nbsp;anniversary of man first circling the planet,” said Hamish Harding, chairman of Action Aviation and the mission’s director, as well as one of its pilots. “It is our way of paying tribute to the past, present, and future of space exploration.”

G650ER Crew Sets New Polar Circumnavigation Record

The Qatar Executive G650ER covered the 21,691 nm route in 46 hours and 40 minutes, shaving nearly six hours off the previous record.

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