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

With scores of eVTOL and eSTOL aircraft currently under design, construction, or even actual testing, the infrastructure needed to support them is also undergoing intense study.&nbsp;Take Airflow's planned hybrid-electric eSTOL model, for instance. It is being developed for middle-mile cargo missions, making trips of up to around 300 miles, directly connecting warehouses or industrial sites.
Speaking at the&nbsp;Vertical Flight Society's&nbsp; Electric VTOL Symposium, Marc Ausman&nbsp;described the runway needs of his proposed blown wing aircraft as being 150 feet of ground roll with an overall requirement of 300 feet in length. That is roughly three times the length of the currently proscribed touchdown-and-liftoff (TLOF) area plus safety zone, for a helipad.
Ausman&nbsp;maintained that such a runway could easily be integrated into urban environments by placing it on the roofs of existing buildings. He cited a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which examined several major cities and found that Los Angeles had 6,200 such potential sites, while New York had 5,700, Dallas and Chicago around 3,800 each, and Boston 2,500. “So even if one percent of those were actually viable, you would still have dozens of rooftops plus other areas around the city and suburban areas where these aircraft can land,” said Ausman.
He also compared the approach and departure corridors specified by the FAA for helipads and vertiports, and noted similarities between the capabilities of helicopters and eSTOLs, with the latter capable of an even steeper approach slope (10 degrees) than the helicopters and eVTOLs (7 degrees) which transition to vertical flight at the last possible moment.
“It’s a bit of a misconception to think that an eVTOL will come in at a 1,000 or 2,000 foot AGL [above ground level] and then descend vertically and land on the helipad and that therefore it can kind of sneak into this little helipad between buildings,” Ausman&nbsp;explained. “There’s just too much energy used to do that and it eats into the range significantly to be able to do that.”
Based on that, Ausman&nbsp;proposed that those who are planning future vertiports should consider enlarging or elongating them to accommodate more varied types of aircraft. “What this means is that these two approach/departure paths and the way these planes operate are not as different as you might think at first blush, he noted. ”Any of these approach corridors designed for helicopters and VTOLs will also support the approach and departure of eSTOL aircraft.”
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Curt Epstein

Airflow's eSTOL is expected to need no more than 150 feet to takeoff from runways no longer than 300 feet in length that could be built right outside cargo warehouses. (Image: Airflow)

Infrastructure Needs For eSTOL and eVTOL Aircraft May Be Closer Than Imagined

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