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.

Business Aviation Services Editor

Curt Epstein

The business jet market remained resilient in the second quarter of the year despite declining flight hours and increased inventory levels compared with a year ago, according to Global Jet Capital’s (GJC's) Q2 Business Aviation Market Brief&nbsp;released this week.
The lender noted that in the second quarter, OEMs reported strong order intake and a nearly 2% backlog growth, while flight operations rose by 6% over the first quarter of this year and departures remained 14% above the second quarter in pre-Covid 2019. “Due to the industry’s inherent value proposition—including personal safety, flexibility, productivity, and comfort—there has been a systemic expansion of the user base with a substantial proportion of these new users continuing to utilize business aviation in 2024,” GJC stated.
As supply chain and labor issues continue to resolve post-pandemic, the airframers have been able to increase production and revenues, causing the industry-wide book-to-bill ratio to decline from 1.3:1 in the first quarter to 1:1 in the second quarter. That level is not expected to change through the remainder of the year.
Led by older aircraft, the available aircraft inventory continued its rising trend in the second quarter, reaching 7.7% of the existing fleet. According to GJC, inventory of on-market aircraft older than 13 years has risen 11.9% thus far in 2024, compared with 5.1% for aircraft 12 years old and younger. With the increase, aircraft 13 years old and older represent 71% of all listings.
After declining in 2023 and early 2024, total aircraft transactions stabilized in the most recent quarter and rose when measured by dollar volume. Year over year, the transaction value swelled by more than $1.5 billion, an increase of 12.3%.

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News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

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In this article

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