Fred George

Chief Aircraft Evaluation Editor

Redmond, Oregon

Summary

Fred formerly served as senior editor and chief pilot with Business & Commercial Aviation and as Aviation Week & Space Technology's chief aircraft evaluation pilot. He has flown left seat in virtually every turbine-powered business jet produced in the past three decades. He now is managing member of Fred George Aero LLC of Redmond, Oregon.

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

By Fred George [email protected]
Spring is here and with this year’s El Niño conditions, some of the most extreme weather hazards could develop now and this summer, including massive thunderstorms and severe icing. Warmer weather fires up nature’s atmospheric heat engine, the solar-powered machine that uses water vapor, lift, differential temperature and instability to create potentially the largest and most violent storms of the year.

By Fred George [email protected]
Step into a Hawker 4000 this year and it would be all but impossible to tell that this aircraft was lucky to survive a 12-year, $1 billion-plus gestation, one of the longest and costliest in business aircraft history. Hawker Beechcraft's largest and most sophisticated offering ever, the super-midsize business jet is key to the company's future, but its cumulative problems once put that future in doubt. Questions about the program are being answered by the product itself, along with the people behind it.

Fred George
We had the opportunity to fly three legs in the airplane, accompanied by senior demo pilot Errol Wuertz and Dennis Hildreth, Hawker 4000 program manager. That gave us the opportunity to look at both extended high-altitude cruise performance and low-altitude handling qualities.