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.
Jeppesen has launched Operator, a cloud-based business aviation platform that integrates flight planning, runway performance and weight and balance calculations, crew scheduling, accounting, pricing, regulatory compliance and trip checklists, among other things. BoldIQ, the fleet optimization and management program that evolved from the failed DayJet operation is intrinsic to the new Jepp service.
Blackhawk Modifications has launched another engine upgrade program, this time targeting the King Air 350. The switch involves replacing that aircraft’s 1,050 shp PT6A-60A engines with a pair of -67As, each rated at 1,200 shp. The Waco, Texas company expects to receive approval for the upgrade in the second quarter of 2017. The change-out will benefit those operators — including military units — needing improved hot-and-high performance.
The business jet market continues to be stubbornly soft, Textron Chairman and CEO Scott Donnelly said on an Oct. 20 conference call about the company's third-quarter earnings. Still, the market is “more or less in line with what we expected this year,” Donnelly said. “Most of the growth is driven by new products coming into the market.” That is why the company is concentrating on bringing to market the Citation Latitude, Citation Longitude, Cessna Denali and eventually, the Citation Hemisphere.
