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

Pre-owned business jet sales started off the year slowly, according to statistics released by industry data provider JetNet. The company’s report for the first third of the year showed that sales declined by 6.3 percent during that span compared with the previous year, with 698 jets changing hands in the first four months. At an average of 429 days, those aircraft spent 97 more days on the market this year than they did last year, while the average asking price declined by 3.5 percent, to approximately $4.12 million.


Though the company said the number of available pre-owned business jets stood at 13 percent in April, or 2,490 aircraft of the in-service fleet of 19,092, that amount represents a decrease of 0.6 points from a year ago and 0.1 point lower than it was in March. Since the middle of last year, retail jet transactions have remained above 2,200 on a 12-month moving average, approaching the high set just before the global economic downturn in 2008.


In the business turboprop segment, the number available on the market continued to decrease, with this inventory finishing April at 7.6 percent, down 1.6 points from a year ago and 0.2 points lower than in March. Though sales were off in the first four months by 8.2 percent, to 415 transactions, average asking prices continued to climb by 13.6 percent, to $1.442 million. Average time on the market for used turboprops shrank by 15 days from a year ago to 322, JetNet said.


The number of turbine helicopters on the market remained virtually static year-over-year, but the transaction total fell by nearly 26 percent, to 335, in the first third of the year. Those rotorcraft that did sell spent an average of 393 days on the market, 18 fewer than in the previous year, while prices for used turbine helicopters tumbled by more than a third, according to the Utica, N.Y.-based company.

Pre-owned Bizjet, T-prop Inventories Still Slowly Shrinking

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