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.
Sandel Avionics and Universal Avionics System Corp. successfully defended themselves in federal court against charges by Honeywell that their respective TAWS designs violated Honeywell's Enhanced GPWS patents. U.S. Magistrate Judge Mary Pat Thynge granted Universal's and Sandel's motions for summary judgment regarding the firms' non-infringement on Honeywell's EGPWS patents on the eve of the trial, which had been set to begin Oct. 31.
Bombardier Aerospace's 7th Annual Safety Standdown, held in Wichita, Oct. 28-30, drew more than 330 attendees. Begun to expose Learjet demonstration pilots to more than what they were learning during simulator-based training, the program was opened to general operators four years ago and attendance has been growing steadily. Explaining the program's appeal, Robert Agostino, Bombardier's chief pilot in Wichita, told B/CA, ``Pilot error has been constant over the last 25 years as a cause of accidents,'' and to change that ``takes attitude, knowledge and discipline.
Competition between CAE SimuFlite, FlightSafety International (FSI) and SimCom, among others, will provide business aircraft operators with more choices in initial and recurrent training courses during the upcoming year. In addition, simulator-based training firms have added much-needed capacity for popular courses, making it easier for operators to get training slots and reducing the number of ``zero-dark-thirty'' training sessions.
