Little more than two weeks ago, I was in the Bahamas, ill-fated Grand Bahama Island specifically. I was a guest of the country’s Ministry of Tourism and Aviation, on a trip to demonstrate how that island, which had lackluster tourism numbers compared to its sisters, had worked to rebound from 2016’s direct hit by Hurricane Matthew. Last year, the Bahamas set tourism records, attracting more than 6.6 million visitors, and was on a pace to exceed that amount.
That is until September 1, when Hurricane Dorian arrived. The monster storm, ferocious even by Category 5 standards, stalled and sat on top of the chain’s major northernmost islands, Grand Bahama and Abaco, wreaking havoc. According to satellite imagery, by the second day of the storm, more than 60 percent of Grand Bahama was under water. Online and television images show structures at Freeport International Airport in shambles, with the shredded carcasses of light aircraft unable to flee Dorian’s wrath, strewn like playthings broken by gigantic unruly children.
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.
