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

While Los Angeles celebrated a Super Bowl victory by the hometown Rams, local FBOs in the area that also served as host for the February 13 game at SoFi Stadium also had reason to cheer as private aviation flights returned to their usual heights after the Covid-stunted totals of last year.

 


With no stadium capacity limitations for this year’s game, it attracted more than 1,400 business aviation flights to area airports in the days preceding it, according to FlightAware, which has been <a href="https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/flightaware/viz/SuperBowlFlightTracking/Dashboard_Withtext_1">tracking Super Bowl flight activity</a> for years. That is more than double last year’s tally, but still less than the 1,600 flights to Miami for Super Bowl LVI in 2020, before Covid became firmly entrenched in the U.S.

 


Industry data provider WingX noted that arrivals at&nbsp;area airports peaked at 501 flights last Friday, with the Monday superseding the game seeing 548 business departures, a 65 percent increase over typical activity in the area.

 


An informal poll of local FBOs by AIN&nbsp;found that Signature Flight Support had more than 600 aircraft on the ground on gameday among its five Southern California locations (KLAX, KVNY, KLGB, KSAN, and KPSP), while Atlantic Aviation estimates it had more than 300 game-related arrivals ahead of the game at its KLAX, KSMO, and KBUR FBOs and pumped more than 150,000 gallons of fuel.

 


Million Air Burbank reported that it welcomed 170 airplanes in the week prior, with 45 airplanes on the ramp at game time, and pumped 134,000 gallons of jet fuel, including nearly 10,000 gallons of sustainable aviation fuel. Meanwhile, at KVNY Castle &amp; Cooke tallied approximately 70 aircraft during the week.&nbsp;Ross Aviation in Long Beach reported it had 75 jets parked on its ramp on game day, while ACI Jet at Orange County-John Wayne Airport saw an increase of about 40 aircraft per day throughout the prior permission required (PPR) period versus typical traffic counts. Based on FlightAware statistics, Camarillo Airport saw 5.5 percent of the business aviation traffic, while Hawthorne Municipal Airport, the closest gateway to the stadium, tallied a 4.8 percent share.

 


While most of the FBOs praised the PPR system and other processes instituted to ease the traffic flow, some noted that traffic levels were slightly lower than what they were anticipating. One possibility is the participation of the hometown Rams in the game, which may have negated much of the travel needs for its fan base.

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