AIN Media Group Editor-in-Chief Matt Thurber to Retire After Nine Years and Four-Decade Career

Matt Thurber, editor-in-chief of AIN Media Group for the past nine years, will retire at the end of October, the company has announced. His aviation journalism career spans four decades, including three separate stints with the AIN team. Before joining AIN, Thurber served as editor of Aviation Maintenance magazine and as an associate editor at Flying magazine.

At AIN Media Group, Thurber contributed to all of the group's publications, covering business aviation news as well as avionics, maintenance, training, safety, operations, and rotorcraft, among other topics, and he also contributed regularly to the group's Business Jet Traveler publication. He has been honored with the NBAA Gold Wing Award for Journalism and multiple Aerospace Media Awards.

Thurber holds an ATP pilot certificate, airplane and helicopter commercial pilot certificates, an instrument flight instructor rating, and type ratings in the Gulfstream G550 and Cessna Citation 500 series, along with an A&P mechanic certificate. His aviation background dates to 1975, when he began flying; in the early 1980s he worked as an A&P mechanic and flight instructor in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and he later earned a bachelor's degree in professional aeronautics from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

AIN Media Group chairman emeritus Wilson Leach said, "Matt is a true legend of aviation journalism, and his contributions as AIN's editor-in-chief have been foundational to its ongoing reputation for high-quality, independent coverage of the industry." In retirement, Thurber plans to spend time with his wife, Esther, and their two children, and to work on three aircraft projects near his home in Vancouver, Washington, while continuing to fly. The AIN team will mark his retirement with an open-to-all reception at NBAA-BACE 2026 in Las Vegas on Wednesday, October 21, at the company's booth (No. 1925, West Hall) from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Trade journalism in business aviation has long relied on editors who bring operational credentials to the coverage itself — type ratings, mechanic certificates, and flight instructor experience that let a reporter parse maintenance, safety, and operations stories with technical fluency rather than secondhand summary. Thurber's combination of an ATP certificate, an A&P mechanic certificate, and decades inside both cockpits and hangars illustrates how that model has worked at AIN across avionics, training, and rotorcraft beats alike.

Succession at the top of a specialist outlet's editorial team is worth watching for how AIN Media Group replaces that blend of credentials across its publications, including Business Jet Traveler. The October 21 reception at NBAA-BACE 2026 will be the next public marker of the transition, and any announcement of a successor editor-in-chief would be the clearest signal of how the group intends to carry that coverage model forward.