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

Curt Epstein

For Sikorsky, 2013 was a mixed bag, according to company president Mick Maurer, who gave his company’s year-end summary presentation this morning. While the company reached a record backlog of more than $15 billion, it also recorded an 8-percent drop in sales, to $6.3 billion, the decrease driven largely by a drop-off in U.S. government orders on both the OEM side and the aftermarket side last year.


In the commercial market, the United Technologies subsidiary saw an increase of more than a half-billion dollars year-over-year in top-line growth, with a backlog of more than $2 billion. “A new growth area for us has been China,” Maurer said, noting the rotorcraft manufacturer has taken in almost $300 million in orders from Chinese operators over the past year and expects its aircraft to be in service with all three of China’s major offshore oil operators. The OEM is using Chinese industry to build the airframe for the S-76D, and the tail for the S-92, and most of the parts that go into the company’s light helicopters. “We certainly believe that the industrialization that we are doing in China is helping us bring sales to China,” noted Maurer, who expects the same synergy to grow in India, where <a href="http://www.ainonline.com/aviation-news/paris-air-show/2009-06-16/tata-takes-over-s-92-cabin">Tata produces all of the company’s S-92 cabins in Hyderabad</a>.


The company also posted $1 billion in contract sales for its Total Assurance Program, which provides maintenance insurance covering the cost of parts replacement and repair on new Sikorsky aircraft. “We’ve been the first OEM to get FAA credit based on the lives of parts for using HUMS data to extend the replacement period on some of the parts on the aircraft. [The approval] will allow us to drive the cost of maintenance down,” said Maurer.


Last month, the company’s S-76D made its long-anticipated entry into service. “The early returns are very favorable,” said Maurer noting 2014 will be the year the new medium cabin upgrade begins to make an impact.

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