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

In the latest edition of its Turbine–Powered Civil Helicopter Purchase Outlook, Honeywell Aerospace downgraded its delivery totals from last year’s forecast by roughly 400 units. Released today at Heli-Expo in Dallas, the results for the 19th annual survey reflect the slow global economic growth environment and volatility in oil and gas markets, which are fostering a cautious worldwide outlook for near-term new purchases despite “generally increasing” fleet utilization. Those usage rates are expected to improve significantly in North and Latin America over the course of the year, with a moderate rise in Europe, and 2017 deliveries are anticipated to increase modestly over 2016’s totals.


"The current global economic situation is causing fleet managers to evaluate new helicopter purchases closely, and that’s why we are seeing a more cautious five-year demand projection compared with previous years,” noted Ben Driggs, president of Honeywell Aerospace for the Americas. In this year’s prognostication, which is based on responses of more than 1,000 chief pilots and flight department managers from companies operating 3,746 turbine and 362 piston helicopters worldwide, Honeywell forecasts deliveries of 3,900 to 4,400 civil turbine helicopters between 2017 and 2021.


Broken down by region, the company (Booth 5423) saw North American purchase plans decline for the second straight year, in this case by more than 2 percent. The region encompasses more than 40 percent of the current global fleet. More than three quarters of the region’s planned purchases in the five-year survey window consist of light, single-engine models, while nearly 13 percent consist of intermediate or medium twin-engine models.


While still above the world average, Latin American purchase plans declined by 13 percent compared with the 2016 survey results, depressed due to sputtering economies in Brazil and Venezuela.


The Middle East and Africa show the second highest new purchase rate predictions, with nearly a quarter of the respondents in the region planning for a new helicopter purchase during the survey window. Nearly 80 percent of the slated purchases will consist of intermediate and medium twin-engine rotorcraft.


In Europe, overall buying plans declined by more than 3 percent, down for the second year in a row, with intended purchases, excluding heavy-twin helicopters, split evenly among the categories.


In the Asia-Pacific region, where rotorcraft operators tend to focus more on corporate and oil and gas usage, purchase plans leaned more toward the medium helicopter segment.


In the BRIC countries, Honeywell noted that limited survey sample sizes in Russia and India cloud its forecast, but it stated that overall, purchase plans are down 11 percent year-over-year.

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