Bill was Editor-in-Chief of Business & Commercial Aviation from 2000 to 2020. During his stewardship, the monthly magazine received scores of awards for editorial excellence.
He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement in Journalism Award from the National Business Aviation Association; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Aerospace Media Awards; the Aviation Journalism Award from the National Air Transportation Association; and an Aerospace Journalist of the Year Award for Business Aviation.
Previously, Bill served as Managing Editor of Aviation Week Television. He was the top editor for both Flying and Professional Pilot magazines, as well as a member of the senior editorial staff at Reader's Digest. He also managed communications for FlightSafety International.
Bill has authored or co-authored three aviation books, was an essayist for National Public Radio, wrote aviation documentaries for The Discovery Channel and has written for numerous publications including The New York Times, Smithsonian Air & Space, Popular Mechanics and The Associated Press, among others.
An active aviator, Bill holds a Commercial Pilot license, along with multiengine, instrument, seaplane and glider ratings.
An AVIATION WEEK Management Forum held July 16 at The McGraw-Hill Companies’ headquarters in New York City focused on the very problems that drew the interest of NEXA researchers. The forum’s theme, “Demonstrating & Quantifying the Value of Business Aviation,” touched on the frustrations and concerns besetting so many flight departments today.
In 2001, the NBAA and GAMA commissioned Arthur Andersen, the former accounting and consulting firm, to determine whether business aircraft contribute to better financial performance for public companies that operate them, and thus, to higher shareholder value as well. The findings, published in a white paper entitled “Business Aviation in Today’s Economy; a Shareholder Value Perspective,” provided dollar-and-cents evidence that business aircraft users outperformed competitors who eschewed that form of transport.
Carl Dietrich CEO and CTO, Terrafugia, Inc., Woburn, Mass. A private pilot at 17, Dietrich pursued his aviation passion in a rigorous intellectual way by winning entry to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. There he earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees and then went on to gain a Ph.D. He was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Innovation, and worked at the university, spending a total of a dozen years there before cofounding Terrafugia with four other MIT grads who are also pilots.
