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

Virginia’s Richmond International Airport (KRIC) has issued a proposal to take control of its two FBOs, with a meeting planned for tomorrow. The Capital Region Airport Commission will vote on a resolution presented last week by KRIC president and CEO Perry Miller that would eliminate Richmond Jet Center—which has more than seven decades in operation at the field—as well as the Million Air Richmond FBO (in operation since 1992) in favor of one airport-controlled entity.
The vote announcement comes after the commission issued and then canceled two RFPs in the midst of the evaluation process over the past year and a half. While the first RFP noted leases for two aviation service providers, the second—seemingly in violation of the airport’s grant assurances—was for only one, despite the fact that both FBO leases are due to expire in early 2026.
Under the airport’s master plan, which calls for the creation of a parallel runway, three leaseholds are identified for general aviation development. Both FBOs attempted to negotiate shorter lease renewals while the airport sorted out its plans, but both were rebuffed. According to the FBOs, they were blindsided by news of the vote scheduling, and both told AIN&nbsp;that the numbers presented in the airport's proposal strongly overstated the potential revenues resulting from the takeover.
Richmond Jet Center—which claims it spent $250,000 developing proposals—said it never received any responses from the airport to its repeated inquiries as to why the RFPs were canceled. It has since filed a lawsuit demanding the commission disclose records on its decision-making process.
KRIC is a mixed-use airport, with airline activity accounting for half of its operations. The two FBOs share in the airline fueling, a task that any airport-operated facility would need to perform in addition to tending to the business and general aviation traffic.

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