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

In 2012, Jason Archambeault and Greg Soho bought Signal Aviation Services, the lone FBO at New Hampshire’s Lebanon Municipal Airport (KLEB). Both worked for the company, Archambeault as director of maintenance and Soho as vice president.
“In 2011, the former owner announced that he wanted to sell the business,” Archambeault told AIN. “Greg and I were already running the company at that time, and we knew it very well inside and out. We saw this as an opportunity to really expand our passions by being much more in the driver’s seat as to the future direction of the business, so we put an offer together that the previous owner accepted, and the rest is history.”
Renaming the facility as Granite Jet Center, the pair renovated the two-story, 7,200-sq-ft terminal, which was built in 1997, installing its namesake countertops throughout and replacing the furniture. The facility—with its exposed wooden beams adding a homey touch—has a landside porte cochere to protect customers from the weather, and the focal point in the lobby is a large, freestanding stone fireplace, one of the few in an FBO that is actually wood-fueled.
“People really love it,” Archambeault explained, adding it gives “that nice natural fire smell” when they come in from the ramp. “We don't do it in the summer because it's just too hot, but once the weather cools off, we'll start having a fire in it every day.”&nbsp;
The ground floor also holds a cozy passenger lounge with large windows overlooking the ramp and the mountains in the distance, as well as a pilot lounge with shower facilities and a business center.&nbsp;
Upstairs is a large, airy space with windows all around, and an aircraft engine hanging from the ceiling as a piece of artwork. “Originally, when the building was designed, it was intended to be a restaurant space,” said Archambeault. “It's been just a big open gathering space, good for people to relax.”&nbsp;
With its ample natural light, the space is also used for training events as well as to accommodate school groups that come to visit for tours. It leads onto an outdoor viewing deck, which has public access stairs from the outside for visitor plane spotting.&nbsp;
The second floor also holds a 10-seat conference room and a kitchen with windows providing views into the adjoining 15,000-sq-ft hangar that houses the company’s Part 145 maintenance operation (piston aircraft only), in addition to storage of aircraft up to a Dassault Falcon 7X. In 2018, the company installed solar arrays on the entire hangar roof that provide nearly 90% of the FBO’s electricity needs.
Granite also leases another 15,000-sq-ft hangar on the other side of the field near the commercial terminal. The FBO has four based turbine aircraft, a pair of Embraer Phenom 300s, a Beechcraft Premier I, and a Daher TBM 850 turboprop single.
The company—which occupies 8 acres at KLEB and handles approximately 25,000 operations a year—recently switched fuel providers to become a Titan-branded dealer. Its fuel farm holds 30,000 gallons of jet-A and 12,000 gallons of avgas, and is served by four new fuel trucks (two 5,000-gallon jet fuel tankers and two 1,000-gallon 100LL refuelers), all equipped with TCS meters that wirelessly transmit information to the CSR desk. They are operated by the company’s NATA Safety 1st-trained line staff, who fuel the commercial aircraft on the field as well.&nbsp;
The FBO also participates in IBAC’s International Standard for Business Aircraft Handling (IS-BAH). “We believe strongly in this type of [safety] culture, and our Stage 2 IS-BAH certification speaks directly to our commitment to safety,” explained Archambeault. “All of our employees take the full gamut of courses in the NATA course catalog because we believe the more they know, the more effectively they can perform for the customer.”
Nearby Ivy League school Dartmouth College generates a lot of the FBO’s traffic, according to Archambeault. “Dartmouth in general spins off a lot of industry in our area too, so that tends to be a big part of it,” he said. “And then generally, there's just a lot of second homes in our area that people come to, a lot of summering in New England.” But fall is the peak season at the facility, which is open from 6 a.m. until 10 p.m. every day. “It coincides well with a lot of things happening at Dartmouth. New students moving in, homecoming happens then, parents' weekends, that sort of thing, but really, the biggest draw is just the classic New England fall weather and scenery. People love to come up during that time.”

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