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

The Vertical Flight Society (VFS) addressed the recent shakeups in the eVTOL aircraft sector during a session at the Verticon trade show in Dallas on March 10. Several high-profile players in the nascent market are either being sold at fire sale prices or being forced to throw in the towel altogether after running out of funds.
According to Mike Hirschberg, the group’s director of strategy and former executive director, “The last several months has resulted in several companies now in insolvency.” He specifically noted Volocopter’s breaking announcement that a Chinese company has agreed to buy it for €10 million—an amount he described as essentially nothing—as it ran out of funding needed to cross the certification finish line after 15 years of development.
“There is a huge gap between designing aircraft, building aircraft, flying aircraft, and then getting to production.” Hirshberg added that there are still several potential OEM pushing for certification but cautioned, “Just because you have a good idea doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to be successful in the business.”
He explained what he describes as the Hirschberg Principle: “You need about a billion dollars, 10 years, and 1,000 engineers to field a new aircraft.” For eVTOLs, he said to add 50 percent to those totals. “New technology takes a long, long time and a lot of money.”
VFS maintains a registry of the world’s eVTOL aircraft designs, and as of this week it has listed nearly 1,100, which it describes as ranging from the silly to the serious.
Among them, it breaks down the designs—from more than 400 companies— in vectored thrust (387), lift and cruise (200), wingless multi-rotors (321), hoverbikes/flying devices (111), and eHelos and gyros (76). Of those, Hirshberg predicts maybe five will be certified over the next half-decade.

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