AIN’s Matt Thurber Gets Wings

AIN editor-in-chief Matt Thurber (left) accepted the David W. Ewald Platinum Wing Award for lifetime achievement in aviation journalism from NBAA board chair John Witzig yesterday at NBAA-BACE. The award honors Thurber’s decades of covering nearly every facet of aviation, work informed by his experience as an ATP-rated pilot, instrument flight instructor, and A&P mechanic. Before joining AIN, he edited Aviation Maintenance and served as an associate editor at Flying. Thurber, a past NBAA Gold Wing Award recipient, retires October 30. In his acceptance remarks, he thanked the demo pilots he has flown with over the years and apologized “for all the ways I beat up their airplanes.” He then urged his team, in Québécois French, to fasten their tuques and not let go of the potato, and signed off with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s liftoff cry: “Poyekhali!” (“Let’s go!”)