Major General Panagiotis Koustenis had a long and distinguished career in the field of aviation. He began his career in aviation as a young officer in the Greek Air Force in the 1950s. As a Greek Air Force pilot, he received training at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio for a year before returning to Greece to continue his career. During his career in the Greek Air Force he was promoted up the ranks and ultimately became Major General prior to his retirement from the Air Force.
He also served as a diplomat and a leader in a variety of aviation-related organizations. He was a founding member of the Astronautical Academy of Athens, Greece. During the war over Cyprus and the Dictatorship in Greece, P. Koustenis suffered the consequences of the military junta while defending democracy, which was re-established in 1974. A few years later, he served as the Military Councilor at the Embassy of Greece in Ankara, Turkey from 1978-1979, a very challenging time in diplomatic relations between Greece and Turkey. He also served as the Director of the Greek State Aircraft Factory, as well as the Director of the Military Museum in Athens, and in both of these functions he set a standard that is still looked up to today.
He had a very positive influence not only on his many colleagues in the field of aviation over the years, but also inspired his children, both of whom followed in his footsteps to develop their own distinguished careers in the field. His daughter, Dr. Athena Coustenis, is an astrophysicist, who received her doctoral degree from the University of Paris, France, and is Director of Research at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) of France, specializing in Planetology. Her research is devoted to the investigation of planetary atmospheres and surfaces, with emphasis on the outer solar system bodies, in particular icy moons of the giant planets, recognized as potential habitats. She was a key contributor to the development and implementation of the international Cassini-Huygens space mission to Saturn and Titan, from inception through completion. She serves on several international advisory groups with NASA and other European Institutions. She is currently the Chair of the European Science Foundation Space Science Committee (ESF-ESSC), which is the umbrella organization coordinating space exploration initiatives for Europe. His son, Georgios Koustenis, also had a distinguished career as a pilot in the Greek Air Force, and flew Phantom jets and other types of state-of-the-art aircraft, while participating in the Gulf War. Since his retirement from the Greek Air Force, he currently serves as a private pilot for international companies.
P. Koustenis passed at age 91 and preserved an immense love and curiosity about aviation up to his last days, when he was still reading magazines about airplanes and talking about flight updates.