As I write this from my seat on a Boeing 777 bound for China, I realize I no longer have the same degree of nonchalance I had on previous long-haul flights. I am aware the airplane, one of the most modern jetliners in the sky, is functioning exactly as intended, the comforting whoosh of its powerful engines omnipresent as it courses smoothly through the air above the Arctic Circle. Yet in the back of my mind, thoughts drift to another Triple Seven, also China-bound, which more than a month after its disappearance still has given investigators little clue as to where it actually ended up and why. It’s not supposed to be like that, in this era of orbiting satellites, which allow us to communicate instantly around the globe and monitor vast swaths of land and sea, and telecom networks of ever-increasing capabilities. We expect our technology to provide all the answers, and it still boggles the mind that such an advanced machine can simply vanish without a trace.
How it did so is the question my family and friends asked me in the days and weeks since its yet unexplained detour, as if my vocation as an aviation journalist gave me some sort of behind-the-scenes insight as to what really happened aboard Malaysian Airlines Flight MH370. A recent national telephone survey found more than 1,000 people with nothing better to do than answer questions about what they feel happened to the airplane. Of their responses, 3 percent believe it was shot down by a foreign government, a la Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983. Slightly more people believe it was abducted by aliens. So much for surveys.
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.
