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
Photograph: Flight Dymanics' HGS 2000 installed in a Falcon 2000. REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: FLYING BLIND Guy Mitaux-Maurouard is a brave man. In late June, Mitaux, chief test pilot for Dassault civil aircraft, settled into the right seat of a Falcon 2000 flight-test aircraft for a flight from Istres, France. I took the left seat of the Flight Dynamics HGS 2000-equipped aircraft and swung the large holographic combiner into view. ``What do you want to do today with the HUD?'' Mitaux inquired.

Fred George
In today's instrument panels that are dominated by large-format displays, mechanical spinning gyro standby attitude indicators are among the last carryovers from the era of clocks and dials. Properly cared for, these instruments can go 7,000 to 10,000 hours between failures, but only if they are overhauled at regular intervals by skilled technicians. Many operators, though, report having failures at much more frequent intervals.

Fred George
Jary Engels, chief pilot for Honeywell Phoenix flight operations, has devised an effective test to evaluate pilot performance using a head-up display (HUD). He puts you in a strange aircraft equipped with a prototype Honeywell/GEC Marconi HUD 2020 with which you've never flown and says, ``Your first hand-flown approach using the HUD will be a simulated Category II ILS to Williams-Gateway Airport Runway 30 Center.''