Fred is a senior editor and chief pilot with Business & Commercial Aviation and Aviation Week's chief aircraft evaluation pilot. He has flown left seat in virtually every turbine-powered business jet produced in the past three decades.
He has flown more than 195 makes, models and variants, ranging from the Piper J-3 Cub through the latest Boeing and Airbus large twins, logging more than 7,000 hours of flight time. He has earned an Airline Transport Pilot certificate and six jet aircraft type ratings, and he remains an active pilot. Fred also specializes in avionics, aircraft systems and pilot technique reports.
Fred was the first aviation journalist to fly the Boeing 787, Airbus A350 and Gulfstream G650, among other new turbofan aircraft. He’s also flown the Airbus A400M, Howard 500, Airship 600, Dassault Rafale, Grumman HU-16 Albatross and Lockheed Constellation.
Prior to joining Aviation Week, he was an FAA designated pilot examiner [CE-500], instrument flight instructor and jet charter pilot and former U.S. Naval Aviator who made three cruises to the western Pacific while flying the McDonnell-Douglas F-4J Phantom II.
Fred has won numerous aviation journalism awards, including NBAA’s David W. Ewald Platinum Wing Lifetime Achievement Award.
The wait is over. On October 14, Gulfstream rolled out the G500, the first of two models from its secretive P42 development program. In the works since 2008, the project actually spawned two new models, the 5,000-nm G500 and the 6,200-nm G600. Both look a lot like the firm’s 7,000-nm G650 flagship, but they have less range, smaller cabin cross-sections and lower price tags. The G500 is priced at $43.5 million and the longer G600 will go for $54.5 million.
The Challenger 300 is a tough act to follow. When it made its debut in late 2003, it instantly became a modern day and more affordable successor to the Gulfstream II, with plenty of thrust, a generously sized wing and sporty performance. Similar to the GII, it had transcontinental U.S. range, a flat floor, room for eight in a double club cabin, inflight baggage access and rock-solid reliability. If it had wide oval cabin windows and a heavy-iron price tag, people might have thought it was built in Savannah, Ga., rather than Montreal.
