One of the unfortunate but unavoidable facts of aviation is that accidents happen. While investigators work to determine why, and attorneys debate over who is responsible, in nearly every case there is a tragic human element involved-families of victims, who suddenly have their lives torn apart. It is a situation no one wants to be in.
There is no way to prepare for it, but there is one group that looks to help people in that situation, as it was created by those who have been there before. The Air Crash Victims Families Group, based in Ridgewood, N.J., was founded in 1983, after the downing of Korean Air Lines flight 007 by a Soviet fighter after the Boeing 747 strayed off course on a flight from the U.S. to Seoul. The airliner was shot down near a restricted Soviet base on the Kamchatka Peninsula, severely straining relations between the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union. While the diplomatic communiqués flew fast and furiously between Washington and Moscow, the family members of the 269 people on board were largely left in the dark. Hans Ephraimson, a retired journalist who lost his daughter on the flight, serves as the group’s spokesman. Over lunch one day, he recalled how he heard about the loss of the aircraft as he was heading into work, and how he immediately called the State Department when he arrived at his office.
A lifelong aviation enthusiast who joined AIN in 2007, Curt came to the publication 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 AIN sister publication 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 Aviation Journalist Award in 2012 and won a Pegasus Sapphire Business Aviation Award for outstanding journalism in 2021.
Before joining AIN, Curt worked with 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.
