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

Someday soon, the same company will be able to fill both your jet’s liquor cabinet as well as its fuel tanks. Air Company, a start-up in the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) market has introduced Air Vodka, an award-winning spirit that is derived from ethanol, a by-product of its SAF refining process which uses just carbon dioxide and hydrogen as its source material. “In many cases of CO2 conversion technologies, ethanol is on the pathway to making the longer hydrocarbon chains that you end up making your sustainable aviation fuel out of,” explained Stafford Sheehan, Air Company’s co-founder and chief technology officer.
Currently one of the most exclusive spirits in the world, Air Vodka is distilled at the company’s pilot test facility in the industrial underbelly of Brooklyn, New York, which is proving and perfecting the company’s production technology at a small scale before hundreds of millions of dollars are spent constructing full-scale production plants. As a result, the company—which was founded in 2017—produces only a limited amount of SAF that is used mainly for test purposes. The amount of ethanol produced is even less, resulting in a yearly production of only a few thousand bottles of vodka a year at most.
In 2019, before making the vodka available commercially, the company decided to enter it into several prestigious international blind liquor test tests such as the Luxury Masters International&nbsp; Spirits Challenge to prove it wasn’t just a novelty, and it came away with several gold medals.
Given its small production, Air Company decided to initially limit its Air Vodka distribution to high-end, Michelin-starred New York City restaurants. “That’s where we had initially started to put the vodka out, and then Covid hit and they all shut down,” Sheehan told BJT. “So as a business, we then had to pivot. We actually took a lot of our ethanol and used it to make hand sanitizer just to help out the pandemic effort.”
As production has since resumed, Sheehan noted that the vodka is <a href="https://www.aircompany.com/products/air-vodka/">sporadically available</a> on the company’s website, but sells out almost immediately. With new refineries being built to slake the thirst for billions of gallons of SAF as part of aviation’s mission to decarbonize, that will change. “When we go to production scale, the idea is that we are going to put [Air Vodka] in every liquor store all around the country,” said Sheehan.

News about environmental issues relating to aircraft operations, including noise issues, emissisions, and regulations. See Fuel for biofuel.

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News and developments about airplanes, helicopters and unmanned air vehicles used in all varieties of operations, including airlines, military, business, commercial, general aviation and private.

News about commercial airlines, including regulations, aircraft orders, safety, acquisitions, and mergers.

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News, issues, personnel, equipment and developments about air traffic management.

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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News and developments about aviation fuel, including jet fuel, aviation gasoline, and biofuel.

News about bills, laws, regulations and other governmental decisions affecting aviation and aerospace. Topics include FAA re-authorizations, taxes on fuel and aviation activities, environmental legislation, ICAO decisions, governmental mediation of labor conflicts and World Trade Organization disputes and decisions.

News and issues relating to international air transport and cargo carriers, national airlines and regional airlines, including aircraft, engines, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security and training.

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News and issues concerning general aviation, specifically airplanes and helicopters powered by piston and alternative engines (i.e., non-turbine powered aircraft). Subjects include aircraft, engines, personnel, acquisitions, accidents, safety, security and training.

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