Garmin G1000 expert and author Max Trescott was named the 2008 National Certificated Flight Instructor of the Year by the General Aviation Awards Program. Perhaps best known for his Max Trescott's G1000 Glass Cockpit Handbook, he is a Master CFI and Master Ground Instructor and teaches flying at the Palo Alto, Calif. airport. Nominated by the FAA Flight Standards District Office in San Jose, Calif, he was previously the FAA's Western Pacific Region CFI of the Year.
Trescott resides in Mountain View, CA, where he has lived for most of his professional life. A native of northern Pennsylvania, he started flying when he was 15 years old. Too young to
drive, his mother Sue, who had herself taken flying lessons as a teenager, drove him to the airport for lessons. He was also inspired by his flight instructor, Dick Johnston, a former
Pennsylvania CFI of the Year, for whom the Wellsboro-Johnston airport is now named.
While attending Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, Trescott completed his private pilot certificate at the age of 19 and met his future wife Laurie. He graduated with a B.A.
in Psychology and a B.S. in electrical engineering. That was followed by an MBA in management strategy and marketing at NYU's Stern School of Business. After college, he worked for
Hewlett-Packard in New Jersey, later moving to HP's company headquarters in Palo Alto, CA. During his 25 years at HP, he worked in a variety of marketing, sales, and management positions
while continuing to fly and earn additional certificates and ratings.
Max acquired his CFI rating in September, 2001, and began working as an aviation educator on weekends at San Jose's Reid-Hillview Airport. Subsequently, he added an ATP certificate as
well as CFII and MEI ratings. After leaving HP, he began teaching full-time as an independent flight instructor with several flight schools at the Palo Alto Airport (PAO) but shifted his
focus to glass cockpit aircraft. He is now a factory trained Cessna FITS instructor, a Cirrus Design CSIP, a Columbia (Cessna) 350 / 400 instructor, and teaches in the national Columbia
recurrent training program.
In 2006, Trescott founded Glass Cockpit Publishing (www.G1000Book.com), launched with the release of his Max Trescott's G1000 Glass Cockpit
Handbook. This was followed with online Internet training and CD-ROM courses, including Max Trescott's Garmin G1000 CD-ROM Course and Max Trescott's WAAS and GPS Course. He is the
corporation's President, and focuses primarily on new product development. His wife serves as the corporation's Vice President.
As a strong advocate for general aviation and flight safety, he regularly posts articles on his Max Trescott on General Aviation blog (www.MaxTrescott.com). Recent articles have urged the FAA to set more aggressive safety goals for general aviation and have explained ramifications of the
FAA's NextGen Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) proposed rulemaking. He also produces the free online aviation safety newsletter Pilot Safety News (www.PilotSafetyNews.com).
Max is a popular speaker at EAA's AirVenture Oshkosh and at Lakeland's Sun-n-Fun, where he presents on the Garmin G1000, Night Flying Safety and WAAS. He also teaches local safety
seminars as a FAASTeam member with the San Jose FSDO and speaks to local pilot groups. He is a member of AOPA (www.aopa.org), NAFI (www.nafinet.org), Mensa, and the Palo Alto Airport Association.
Nominations for the 2009 GA Awards are due at local FAA FSDO offices by September 30, 2008. Nomination forms can be found at http://www.faa.gov/safety/awards/general_av/media/ga_awards_application.pdf