Meet the Author: Marijan Jozic  

Posted: April 25, 2023

Marijan Jozic didn’t realize he was a natural storyteller.  

It wasn’t until he was already 20 years into his career before he realized he had an innate ability to tell a tale that made people want to lean in and learn more.  

“I was in Hamburg at a conference, and Smiths Industries, a company that makes aircraft instruments, was having a party and serving ice cream,” Jozic recalled. “I was eating ice cream with this guy, and we started to talk about some articles I had written, and I found out he was the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Plane Talk.”  

Jozic’s new acquaintance invited him to share his writing for consideration in a future issue of the magazine. Shortly after the event, Jozic went on vacation and nearly forgot about the invitation, but with free time on his trip, he sat down and got to writing. Soon after, he stopped by an internet café to send the 8-page article to his contact.  

“He called maybe a half hour later and said, ‘I like your article, you’ll be published,’” Jozic said.  

From then on, requests for Jozic’s unique perspectives came from multiple publications, and he soon became a regular writer in the engineering publication scene. In 2004 at the Farnborough Air Show, Jozic was nominated for the Aerospace Journalist of the Year award for one of his Plane Talk articles. He was nominated again the following year for the same award at the Paris Air Show for another article.  

“That for me was a big deal, because I’m not a writer, I’m an engineer,” Jozic said.  

With the confidence from his time in aviation journalism, Jozic transitioned to longer form writing. He’s the author of multiple books, with his most recent publication, Aviation Engineering: Navigating Through the Golden Years, releasing at SAE International earlier this year.  

In his latest writing endeavor, Jozic revisits 40 years of aerospace development from the 1980s to today, with the unique perspective of his own experience framing this critical time of advancing technology in the aviation industry.  

“The whole book is covering what I think is probably the most important period of time between 1980 and 2020 when aviation was growing very rapidly,” Jozic said. “It was different from nowadays where you buy an airplane with everything already installed. I found it very exciting. I was always in the first row installing new systems and features.” 

Jozic enjoyed revisiting stops along his personal journey in aviation engineering and is excited for readers to take that journey with him.  

“The book has a lot of background information on why we as engineers do the things we do, and I think it is maybe the only place right now—at least that I know of—where all forty years of these projects are bundled in one place,” he said. “I think young engineers in particular will have fun reading these and learning the background of the products they’re working with today.”  

Take off with Jozic and fly the friendly skies of Aviation Engineering: Navigating Through the Golden Years by ordering your copy today.