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This is the victim’s father...

William B. Scott retired in 2007 as the Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine. During his 22 years with Aviation Week, he also served as Senior National Editor in Washington, and in Avionics and Senior Engineering Editor positions in Los Angeles. He focused primarily on advanced aerospace and weapons technology, business, flight testing and military operations, wrote more than 2,500 stories for the magazine, and received 17 editorial awards. He has coauthored three books: Space Wars: The First Six Hours of World War III (fiction; 2007, 2008, 2010); Inside the Stealth Bomber: The B-2 Story (nonfiction; 1991) and a Space Wars sequel, entitled Counterspace: The Next Hours of World War III, which was released in October 2009.

Scott is a Flight Test Engineer (FTE) graduate of the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School (Masters equivalent) and a licensed commercial pilot with instrument and multi-engine ratings. In 12 years of military and civilian flight testing, plus evaluating aircraft for Aviation Week over 22 years, he has logged approximately 2,000 flight hours on 80 aircraft types. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from California State University-Sacramento.

During a nine-year Air Force career, Scott served as aircrew on classified nuclear sampling missions; an electronics engineering officer at the National Security Agency; and an instrumentation and flight test engineer (FTE). He also worked as a civilian FTE/program manager and proposal group manager for three aerospace companies: General Dynamics (F-16 Full Scale Development program), Falcon Jet Corp. (Coast Guard HU-25A development and certification), and Tracor Flight Systems Inc. (Canadair Challenger development and certification, plus numerous fighter, transport and helicopter test programs). He currently is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

Scott has won three Royal Aeronautical Society “Aerospace Journalist of the Year” awards — the “Best Defense Submission” in 1998 and the “Best Air Show Submission” in both 2006 and 2007. He also was part of an Aviation Week team that won a 2004 Neal Award for its coverage of the space shuttle Columbia tragedy. A Neal award is the business-to-business magazine equivalent of a newspaper Pulitzer Prize.

In 2002, Scott served as a member of the U.S. Forest Service/Bureau of Land Management Blue Ribbon Commission on Wildland Aerial Firefighting. The three-month effort examined all aspects of aerial firefighting, and identified a number of systemic factors that contributed to three fatal air tanker and helicopter accidents—including two wing-loss incidents—during the 2002 wildfire season.

He was a founding board member of the Colorado Consortium for Earth and Space Science, which established the Challenger Learning Center of Colorado. He currently serves on the board of the Colorado Homeland Defense Alliance.