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

Business aviation mogul Kenn Ricci and his wife Pamela have established a pair of endowments at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), with the contributions funding two faculty chairs aimed at fostering innovation.
Ricci, the principal of Directional Aviation Capital—which lists aviation companies such as Flexjet, Sentient Jet, 4Air, Nextant Aviation, Everest Fuel, Sirio, and Tuvoli among its brands—joined the university’s board of trustees last year.
“We want to encourage bold thinking about the growth and advancement of aviation,” said Ricci, who has spent his entire career in the aviation industry and has championed evolving developments such as supersonic and laminar-flow technologies. “In creating these two chairs—the Ricci Family and the Flexjet Chair for Aviation, Aerospace, or Space Innovation—we are supporting the kind of educators who will instill an ethos of problem-solving in their students, which inevitably will lead to innovation.”
The gifts to ERAU will add two faculty positions, and like most endowed chairs in higher education, they will be awarded to industry leaders in their fields and will provide a stipend to the faculty member, as well as funds to conduct research. The goal is to attract top talent and drive student innovation at the university.
“On behalf of the entire Embry-Riddle community, I express our deepest gratitude to Trustee Ricci and Pamela Ricci for their remarkable gift and steadfast support,” said ERAU president P. Barry Butler. “The creation of these endowed chairs marks a transformative moment for our university, enabling us to bolster research and development, support our world-class facility, and further enhance Embry-Riddle’s reputation as a global leader in aviation and aerospace education.”

News about simulators and training procedures, as well as workforce.

Ricci Family Endowments Further Innovation Development at ERAU

Donations will sponsor two new faculty positions at the university

A Ricci family donation spurs innovation at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Ricci Family Furthers Innovation Development at ERAU

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News and issues relating to the aerospace industry that are related to the science, engineering and business of flight in space involving civil, industrial and military applications, and similar topics related to flight in the atmosphere of the Earth that are not covered more directly by other AINonline subject channels. In other words, both astronautical and aeronautical subjects, except for those aeronautical topics that are specifically covered elsewhere on this website.

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