Fred George

Chief Aircraft Evaluation Editor

San Diego, CA

Summary

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.

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Articles

Fred George
Learjet 45 Lima Juliet, third call. Right turn heading 270. Contact me on 1-3-2 decimal 7-2, over," the controller said impatiently. "Ah, center. Can you repeat that?" I couldn't fully comprehend what center wanted us to do. Short of breath, experiencing some hot and cold flashes, and a little dizziness, could it be the onset of a cold? It wasn't the result of too much folic the night before this mission. It was just so hard to concentrate.

Fred George
Cruising along at 0.83 Mach at 45,000 feet toward NBAA 2005 in Orlando with five passengers aboard, we glanced down at fuel flows and did a double take. The Hawker 4000 we were flying was burning 1,850 pph, about what you would expect if you were flying a Hawker 800XPi at 0.77 Mach down in the high 30s. Then, we swapped seats with the safety pilot in the cabin and checked interior sound levels.

Fred George
These graphs are designed to illustrate the performance of the Hawker 4000 under a variety of range, payload, speed and density altitude conditions. Do not use these data for flight planning purposes because they are gross approximations of actual aircraft performance.