The FAA’s equipage mandate for ADS-B is now less than two-and-a-half years away, as the MRO shops that specialize in such work continually remind us. Warnings of limited manpower and maintenance slots are given on a near-daily basis in an effort to spur operators into locking up appointments and giving the maintenance providers some scheduling surety, yet, according to research by Duncan Aviation, “in the 29 remaining months before the FAA’s deadline to comply with its ADS-B mandate, roughly 70 percent of the business jet aircraft flying still have to upgrade for ADS-B.”
In July, speaking at EAA AirVenture, FAA administrator Michael Huerta warned the general aviation community for the umpteenth time that the Jan. 1, 2020 equipage mandate will not slip. That has some in the industry expecting a stampede on avionics shops as owners suddenly wake up and realize that their aircraft will be rendered AOG if not in compliance with the looming mandate. “The expected demand is real, and everyone knows it,” noted Aircraft Electronics Association vice president Ric Peri, in his column in the August issue of the association’s newsletter. “Yet people choose not to make reservations.”
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.
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