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 crew member mentioned a problem with the left engine seconds before that&nbsp;pilot's Beechcraft King Air 350i crashed at the Dallas-area Addison Airport, according to the NTSB's preliminary report&nbsp;<a href="https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/business-aviation/2019-07-01/king-air-crash-texas-claims-10">on the June 30 accident</a>&nbsp;that claimed the lives of eight passengers and two crew members.

 


The aircraft (N534FF),&nbsp;registered to EE Operations, was slated for a Part 91 trip to Albert Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg, Florida,&nbsp;and according <a href="https://app.ntsb.gov/pdfgenerator/ReportGeneratorFile.ashx?EventID=20190630X33829&amp;AKey=1&amp;RType=Prelim&amp;IType=MA">to the report</a>, the crew and passengers arrived about an hour and a half before the flight. The turboprop twin’s tanks were topped off and the luggage was loaded in the aft baggage compartment. A witness to the accident stated that the airplane “seemed more quiet than normal” on takeoff, and sounded like it did not have enough power to take off. After it lifted off, the King Air drifted to the left and then rolled left, with one security camera catching it completely inverted before it crashed into a hangar. While some fragments were found inside and on the roof of the hangar, the main wreckage came to rest outside the hangar against a brick wall.

 


The aircraft was equipped with an L3 FA2100 cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered with two hours of useable audio, including the accident flight. A crew member mentioned the engine&nbsp;problem&nbsp;eight seconds before the end of the recording. Three aural bank angle alerts were heard five seconds later.

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