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

EVO Group, which consists of EVO Jet Services and EVO Fuels, has experienced noteworthy growth since it entered the U.S. domestic contract fuel market in 2014. This year, the company expects to reach a milestone of 20 million gallons of fuel sold, with a growth of 80 percent in 2017. “We are proud of this because it’s a tough market, and we have gotten on most people’s radar,” said company managing director and strategy lead Chris Cartwright. “We were better known for 20 years as international ground handlers that pioneered Eastern Europe. Now we are focused on fuel, trip support, and innovative apps.”

 


Cartwright credits the company’s growth to bringing more trip support customers on board, while also achieving a “critical mass” of fuel customers, who tend to turn exclusively to EVO. “They sole-source from us because of dispatch speed, reliability, man-hour savings, transparency, and billing accuracy,” he said.

 


The company has embraced IT and app technology, and it was an early adopter of fuel price automation through platforms such as Fuelerlinx, PFM, and Airplane Manager. The system integrates easily with any platform, a feature the company attributes to its investment in automation, yet it is fully backed up by staff for customer service. “We ensure that our operations teams are not just reading from screens,” Cartwright noted. “They keep the human touch and familiarity with specific customer preferences and requirements.”

 


<h2>Analytics and Awareness</h2>

 


The company expects to continue its growth by providing additional value-added services, two of which it is unveiling in Orlando at NBAA's annual convention (Booth 830).

 


EVO Jet Analytics allows aircraft management providers to easily generate owner reports, which it promises will increase efficiencies in data collection and processing by establishing a digital flight log with detailed records and analytics. Available now for a per-tail subscription fee, the program collects operational, financial, and tax data and makes it easily navigable through user-friendly dashboards on tablets or smartphones.

 


At the show, the company is also demonstrating its new 3D Airport Situational Awareness app and plug-in. It provides pilots with a three-dimensional rotatable view of an airport with briefing features such as taxiway views. It also provides a graphic representation of prevailing wind patterns, full-track approach paths, and missed approach and departure climb visuals. Terrain is near photo quality and there are call-outs for peak altitudes for terrain or obstacles. The plug-in is best viewed on a tablet or larger screen, and users can select for night, fog, or even foggy night to reduce visibility and offer a realistic view of the approach from the cockpit.

 


“We feel that there is no other visual aid that provides pilots with all the preflight airport situational data that they need,” said EVO director Paul Wilkinson, adding there are already more than 500 airports in the database with more added each week. “We are focusing on loading as many airports with terrain [information] as fast as we can.”

 


Cartwright believes the 3D briefing feature, which is also available on a per-tail subscription basis, will be offered to larger platforms as a bolt-on module in the future. “We are already speaking with all the majors about integrations,” he said.

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