For Pilatus PC-12 operators, the exciting news at NBAA was mostly at the Garmin booth. Usually these folks are tight-lipped about certification plans for specific aircraft, but apparently the marketing folks failed to fully brief the booth guys (nearly all appeared to identify as men). They said that they expected PC-12 certification for the new autopilot and displays within 18 months. Thus for $200,000 an older PC-12 could shed its $17,000-per-year Bendix/King (Honeywell) warranty and cathode ray tube displays in favor of a thoroughly modern panel. Bendix/King simply had no response to this competition. There are roughly 700 PC-12s out there stuffed with Bendix/King (Honeywell) avionics designs from the late 1980s/early 1990s. Boxes critical to flight safety are failing multiple times per year in an airplane that can hold 11 people. Honeywell folks at the show, asked if they were going to provide owners of their product with an upgrade path to something modern, simply said “we’re thinking about it.”
If the avionics in a legacy PC-12 are getting tougher to maintain every year, the rest of the airframe may be getting easier. Pilatus is working on a maintenance interval extension (currently at 150 hours). The company also redesigned the wing de-ice timer to use solid-state relays and also not to start inflating the rubber boots for 20 seconds. This gives the pilot time to check the outside temperature and, if below -40C, turn the boots back off (they’ll crack if operated in super cold high altitude air, a $30,000+ mistake). This being the aviation industry, nobody at the operator’s meeting raised his or her hand to ask “Why isn’t a $5 million airplane smart enough to display a ‘too cold for boots’ warning and then inhibit them unless the pilot confirms with an additional switch input that it is an emergency where the boots might help?”
In my Pilatus News from the 2015 NBAA I noted that GE and Cessna were working on a PC-12 competitor. The Cessna Denali seems to be coming along, but hasn’t flown. So far Pratt hasn’t made any commitments to matching the technology in the new GE turboprop engine, including the FADEC. Pilatus is concentrating on getting its PC-24 jet out the door. So the Cessna Denali could be a home run in this market if it ends up substantially outperforming the existing PC-12 (not significantly improved since 2005 when the PC-12/47 model was introduced (the Honeywell panel introduced for the NG model in 2008 is not universally regarded as an “improvement”; the Cessna will have the Garmin G3000 that everyone wants)).
The Pilatus operator’s meeting was dominated by “government regulation giveth and government regulation taketh away.” The European bureaucrats, after about 20 years, finally approved all-weather charter operations in single-engine turboprops such as the PC-12 (now that 1,500 PC-12s have been built and some have accumulated more than 30,000 flight hours!). On the other hand, after more than 20 years of peace, the U.S. FAA bureaucrats decided to wage war on charter operations in the PC-12, citing FAR 135.163:
No person may operate an aircraft under IFR, carrying passengers, unless it has
(f) For a single-engine aircraft:
(1) Two independent electrical power generating sources each of which is able to supply all probable combinations of continuous inflight electrical loads for required instruments and equipment; or
(2) In addition to the primary electrical power generating source, a standby battery or an alternate source of electric power that is capable of supplying 150% of the electrical loads of all required instruments and equipment necessary for safe emergency operation of the aircraft for at least one hour;
The older PC-12s have a “GEN2” belt-driven alternator (115 amps at 28 volts) that is certainly adequate for getting back on the ground in the event that the main GEN1 (300 amps) fails. They also have a main battery and an emergency battery system for the essential instruments. Somehow various local offices decided that the unchanged airplane did not comply with the unchanged regulation. Three operators were shut down while planes in other regions were still running. After a year of paperwork submissions to various FAA offices, Pilatus and the General Aviation Manufacturers Association went as supplicants to the FAA headquarters and somehow got this sorted out.
The Harvey Weinstein story had broken a week before NBAA and Bill Cosby is known as a Pilatus PC-12 owner (N712BC gets him and his family in and out of the 3200′ runway at Turners Falls). The big fight in California over the Santa Monica airport also had been in the news. Finally there were celebrations of general aviation’s contributions to disaster relief, including bizjets going in and out of hurricane-struck Puerto Rico. These items were put together: “Bill Cosby could send his PC-12 into Santa Monica to rescue all of the women who said ‘no’ to Harvey Weinstein,” which generated a response “There would probably be a couple of seats empty.” (the executive configuration PC-12 holds 6-8 passengers in the back)
Pilatus is a private company, but Switzerland apparently requires some public-company-style disclosures of big private companies (this makes sense under Econ 101; markets function with textbook efficiency only when participants have a lot of information). We learned that the company has revenues of about 900 million Swiss francs (worth slightly more than one USD) and profits before R&D and interest of about 200 million francs (down closer to 100 million after R&D expenses, presumably mostly associated with the PC-24 jet). The company was profitable even through the ugly 2008-2010 years.
The PC-24 jet remains on track for certification later this year and delivery of the first plane (on December 31 at 11:58 pm?) to New Hampshire-based PlaneSense, the world’s most experienced Pilatus PC-12 operator. It will cost about $10 million for this eight-passenger plane (10 pax in airline config, plus 2 pilots in front), but the company has taken 83 orders and won’t accept more until at least some are out in the wild.
In related news, CNN has an eye-catching female pilot story:
http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/female-pilot-instagram/index.html
“When Kats decided to become a pilot, social media was still new. Now she’s is one of several successful female aviators taking over social media with aspirational shots of their high-flying careers.” … “Kats says she never intended her profile to take on this life of its own.” ..”But at some point it started growing. People liked my pictures and more people started to follow me.” … “At time of writing, Kats has 87.6k followers and growing.” … “But it’s her behind-scenes look at the life of a pilot that’s the real draw for her followers.” …”They’re very interested in this profession,” she says. [I’m sure they are ignoring those pictures on the beach in bikini].
“Aviation is still a male-dominated industry, but Kats says her male colleagues have always been very welcoming. ” [not surprising when looking at the pics] …” However she occasionally encounters misogyny from passengers.” … “Because of the position of my seat and the captain’s seat — usually they see me first when they get into the plane, as they look towards the cockpit,” she explains. “And then, occasionally I’ve have someone to look a bit further into the cockpit, to check if there is a male pilot as well around.”
“Her profile’s influence might be a happy accident — but Kats is delighted if her posts inspire young fans to follow in her footsteps.”…”If people tell me they are inspired, this is one of the best compliments that I could get,” she reflects.
They claim PC24 can take off from gravel runways. Isn’t it a pipe dream? Wouldn’t it end the first time it sucks some gravel intro the engine?
GermanL: Thanks for that link. I like CNN’s subhead: “Flying in the face of adversity”. Certainly it is tough to be a healthy employed 24-year-old from Holland, one fo the richest countries on the planet (see https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html ).
Maybe the adversity is that she doesn’t know when her next beach vacation will be? Or it is the risk of sunburn due to limited bikini coverage? Or she is afraid that Harvey Weinstein will stop flying around in Gulfstreams with Hillary Clinton and instead end up with a Coach-class ticket in the back of her Boeing 717?
SK: There are turbojets that are certified to operate from grass and gravel runways, oftentimes with the addition of a “gravel kit” that is supposed to reduce the chance of a wheel kicking anything into the engine. See http://jetav.com/citation-ultra-cessnas-popular-workhorse-still-earning-its-keep/ for example: “About five to 10 percent of Cessna’s customers ordered the optional gravel runway kit. This option features a nose-wheel spin-up system that prevents debris from being kicked up into the engines when the nose wheel touches down on the runway, along with antenna guards and flap shields.”
For airliners see http://www.cobham.com/media/1002643/gravel-kit-info-sheet.pdf and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravelkit (Boeing 737!)
See also http://www.b737.org.uk/unpavedstripkit.htm
> So far Pratt hasn’t made any commitments … including the FADEC.
As many have suspected: P&W is working on a beefed-up PT6 w electronic power/prop controller + 2000hp, and P&W’s president hinted that a “Super PC-12” would benefit from such an engine. Aviation Week expects a running full demonstrator by year’s end?
http://kingairnation.com/pwc-talks-new-2000-shp-rated-pt6-engine/
http://aviationweek.com/bca/pratt-whitney-canada-provides-details-new-pt6
gyas: I’m not sure that a 2000 hp PT6 will be useful to anyone other than airlines. Unless the new engine represents a quantum leap in efficiency, putting it into the PC-12 airframe would result in a few extra knots of cruise speed (speed increases as horsepower cubed, right?) and a massive reduction in range.
Controller lists some 1998’s Cessna CJ’s with G1000 avionics, for a total of $1.2M. Why not the jet yet PC-12’s of similar ages are more expensive, at least for the acquisition cost?
On a side note, another pilot and I are planning to fly from KFFA to the 2018 Zhengzhou GA airshow, to see the Earth rounder reunion (though no plan of becoming one) among other things. We are looking into a DA42/62; but if your PC-12 is available, please let me know!
That is cheap for a CJ with G1000, especially if it is on the various engine programs and there isn’t a $600,000 overhaul coming up.
Why can a similar vintage PC-12 be worth more? The interior is larger, the plane is simpler to fly, a lot more runways are accessible, the costs per mile are lower on short trips, it is a lot easier to get bulky stuff in and out, and perhaps overall operating costs are lower (training costs are cheaper, for example, no annual ride with the FAA or a DPE is required, etc.). When anything goes wrong with a jet, the repair costs can be truly spectacular. What is $10,000 on a Cirrus can easily be $100,000 on a Citation Jet. The PC-12 is kind of in the middle (maybe $30,000?).
Mostly, though, I think that the low price on a CJ reflects the fact that there are a lot of near substitutes available. For the PC-12, on the other hand, there are only 1,500 big single-engine pressurized turboprops that have ever been made. Also, for the CJ, the people who can afford to operate any jet are able to scratch up a little more capital and get something bigger, like a CJ3. Anything smaller than a PC-12 or a CJ3 seems to be extremely difficult to operate for charter due to the high fixed costs of regulatory compliance, hangar, insurance, etc. When a CJ is too tired for personal or small business use, therefore, it needs to be scrapped. When a PC-12 is too tired for personal or business use, it can still be sold and operated as a freighter.
Finn: It’s great to hear about your plans to make it to China! Why not become an Earth-rounder, though, if you’re going all the way from North Carolina or China? Were you thinking of selling the plane once you get to China? If not, why not keep going until you’re all the way around the world?
What route are you planning?
If you are going to get hold of a PC-12 for this trip you also need to get http://www.flywithamelia.org/ to fly it for you! (She says, on her site, “I flew around the world on my own terms” so you know that she did pretty much everything that the Pilatus factory pilot didn’t do. Well, except for the stuff that the ground planners and fixers probably did (see http://www.whiteroseaviation.co.uk/ for an example).)
I think she should say she received flight instruction while a factory pilot/CFI flew the plane around the world!!!
Thanks for the suggestions and insights! The ground planners’ website appears quite helpful, though I suspect they are just the middleman and will have to rely on local agents for most countries. We are planning the Bering Strait crossing both ways, so we will have to deal with only two lesser corrupt countries. Flying with Amelia (or Global Girl) would involve a premium for their celebrity status; so much for equal pay! Why not going around the earth? That’s been done many times and no new things are to be discovered, and we’ll try to stay on the practical side of doing it (quote Richard Feynman), just to see places from a lower altitude than a 777. VR won’t beat it for a few years yet. We are doing a practice run next month flying a rental DA40 in a round robin flight between RDU and RHV in 11 days, in a more southerly route through TX.