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.
Saab 5123L, confirm that you are a turboprop,'' inquired a Washington Center controller on the day we flew the Saab 2000. His inflection was unmistakable: ``Aren't you actually a jet?'' We imagined that he thumped his aging computer console a couple of times, trying to clear its digital cobwebs, as he watched us climb out of Dulles at 240 KIAS. At 37,000 pounds, the Saab 2000 admittedly was well below its 50,260 pounds MTOW, with only a few passengers on board. The relatively light weight, however, doesn't discount the Saab 2000's performance accomplishments.
C. Donald Bateman, AlliedSignal Commercial Avionics Systems' chief engineer of Flight Safety Systems, has an iron stomach, which is an essential part of his job description. Bateman has pored over hundreds of controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) accident reports to find out why flightcrews flew otherwise well-working airplanes into the ground, frequently snuffing out the lives of all on board.
Walk through Raytheon Aircraft's Plant III in Wichita, and you might well miss an innocuous-looking gray door in the middle of the building. Indeed, the door is almost invisible to the employees who bustle around computer-controlled machine tools, rather strange-looking composite test structures and two-story-high autoclaves big enough to swallow a city bus.
