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.

Senior Editor

Curt Epstein

Labor issues are a continuing, and in some cases, growing concern across the aviation manufacturing spectrum, according to speakers at last week’s annual JetNet iQ Summit at the TWA Hotel at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
“The same lingering issues that we’re facing in terms of bringing talent in and filling our staffing requirements, our suppliers are facing as well,” said David Rosenberg, Textron Aviation’s senior v-p and CFO.
The effects of Covid on lower-tier manufacturers in the supply chain still cast a large shadow, according to Embraer Executive Jets president and CEO Michael Amalfitano. As these companies either closed or laid off workers, that restricted the flow of parts as master craftsmen moved on to different employers. “The people shortage happened in months, the supply recovery is years,” he said. “It takes a long time to recover that skillset across the supply chain.”
Particularly affected were those small companies that provided just a handful of crucial, specialized parts, such as forgings or castings. “When we look at our vendors, a lot of them are small vendors that maybe had one master technician taking care of that one part,” explained Delray Dobbins, head of sales and strategy for Pratt &amp; Whitney Canada’s Eagle Service Plan. “Post Covid, that master technician is gone.”
The shortage of such talent comes as the industry looks to increase production in the face of strong demand for new aircraft. “When we had these types of backlogs, our industry has ramped up rapidly,” said GAMA president and CEO Pete Bunce. “Then when something happens like a recession, all of a sudden we are looking at layoffs, and we have these big amplitudes. A lot of these companies either went out of business or they are trying to ramp back up and they don’t have the labor out there.”
With the strict part tolerances demanded by aviation manufacturers, quality control has been another aspect of the loss of skilled labor. “Even when something is built and shipped and it shows up, if it doesn’t meet the standards, it goes back,” noted Amalfitano. “That has happened in this timeframe much more than it ever has in the decades before.”

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