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.
Icing, as a potential threat to aircraft, ebbs and flows through history like the ocean tides that flood certain sections of the coast. In an effort to guard aircraft and coastlines from the most probable and predictable onslaughts of nature, engineers have carefully devised cost-effective defenses.
The Official Airline Guide is one of the most effective ways to justify the acquisition of a corporate shuttle aircraft. Run your fingers down the pages, and you'll find a list of dozens of smaller cities that have little airline service. The air fares to many of those cities, which have not benefited from the competitive effects of airline deregulation, have skyrocketed.
For 13 years, James D. Raisbeck, president of the company that bears his name, has been defying the odds. Raisbeck Engineering's specialty is building modification kits, or ``systems'' as Raisbeck prefers to call them, for Beech King Airs. Most modifiers don't survive a third as long as Raisbeck Engineering, let alone thrive as this Seattle-based firm has done. The proportion of Raisbeck-equipped Beech King Air 200 aircraft, for example, has increased from five percent in 1985 to 35 percent of the active King Air 200 fleet today, the firm's records show.
