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.

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Boeing BBJ, BBJ2, BBJ3, BBJ Max, BBJ747, BBJ757, BBJ767, BBJ777, BBJ787

Curt Epstein

Boeing Business Jets has introduced a new streamlined pre-designed cabin layout option for its BBJ737-7 that it said will simplify the purchase and completion process for customers.
Starting in 2026, the airframer will offer its BBJ Select process as an alternative to its traditional procedure of delivering a green airframe to a third-party completions specialist that is contracted to the buyer under a separate agreement.
Instead, through a partnership with its exclusive BBJ Select completions partners Aloft AeroArchitects and Greenpoint Technologies, Boeing Business Jets will offer modular pre-designed cabin layouts in a choice of three Select color palettes at a single all-in price, under a single contract with Boeing, which will then deliver a completely outfitted aircraft.
“For customers who may not have the time or desire to create a fully bespoke interior, BBJ Select offers pre-designed options to outfit their cabin, which allows us to offer the jet at a very attractive, fixed price,” explained Boeing Business Jets president Joe Benson.
The front crew rest areas and the aft private bedroom/bathroom—a shower will be standard on every BBJ Select—configurations will remain set. But customers can choose from a wide range of module configurations, leading to 144 possible combinations in the remaining three zones in between. This middle space equals the entire length of a traditional ultra-long-range business jet cabin while offering 50 percent more area, Boeing said.
“Between all of the layout options, the three-color palettes, and additional material choices embedded within each color palette, it’s very likely we’ll never build two identical BBJ Select aircraft," said Drew Gough, the manufacturer’s head of sales for the Americas. “That’s okay because we’ve designed the interior IT backbone to accept this modularity, so we can swap cabin modules in and out during the cabin configuration process relatively simply on our end.”
For aircraft requiring additional sleep capacity, one of the new module designs—taken from the company’s commercial side—will include six business class pods with doors and fully convertible lie-flat seats, which can boost the configuration to 16 sleep positions. Another module option is the partial-width private room which can be used as a second bedroom, private lounge, or office while still allowing room for a passageway to the aft of the aircraft.
In addition to eliminating one-time engineering costs and other expenses related to the design and production of a clean sheet interior, the Select process will save time on the delivery of the aircraft by eliminating a step in the completions process.
Aloft has installed the auxiliary fuel tanks on every BBJ737 since the launch of the aircraft, and instead of the aircraft first going to the company’s Georgetown, Delaware facility for this process and then on to another completions center, the work can be done concurrently with the cabin interior installation with monuments supplied in part by Greenpoint.
Over its 27-year history, Boeing Business Jets has delivered more than 250 aircraft, including more than 160 in the 737 family.

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