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Aviation History
1991
1991 - 1561.PDF
UTILITY WITH QUALITY Pilatus has moved upmarket with its latest product hut has not strayed from its roots in turboprop singles and utility aircraft, reports Charles Gilsonfrom Stans. T wo subjects that Pilatus Aircraft might justifiably claim to know more about than most airframe manufacturers are single-engine turboprops and niche markets. The new PC-12 utility transport, which made a 42min maiden flight on 31 May, fits a mould that has made Pilatus one of the most reliably profitable in the Swiss Oer- likon-Buehrle group. The PC-12 is designed to maintain that profit record and to redress an unfashionable business bias towards the military sector. Since launching the astonishingly short- take-off-and-landing (STOL) PC-6 Turbo- Porter (still in production after 400-plus examples and 30 years), and via the PC-7 and PC-9 military trainers, Pilatus has built more than 1,000 turboprop singles and supported them in some of the most de manding environments in 60 countries. The PC-12 is primarily a commercial machine, although, undoubtedly, it will find govern ment and military customers — particularly outside North America. It is aimed at, what Pilatus sees, as an empty niche. Like all such apparently unfilled holes in the market, its size and value, paradoxically, have to be defined in terms of the competi tion. The PC-12 market is perceived as lying between the established Cessna Cara van 1 and an industry-standard twin, the Beech Super King Air B200. On the one hand, it looks like a substantial niche. Pilatus' market research predicts at least 640 aircraft up to the year 2004, not counting potential fleet purchases from express-parcels operators. On the other hand, it is a niche in which, says Larry Bardon, director of PC-12 product manage ment: "There is not room for two of us". Market research for what was to become the PC-12 began at Pilatus in 1983, when the company wanted to find a commercial replacement for its PC-6 and balance its military trainer business. What it saw emerging from the single-engine fraternity were needs for more payload volume, speed, range and reliability. The light-twin market, Pilatus judged, would be happy with single- engine operating costs combined with twin- engine performance, as long as the assumed reliability and safety of the twin could be retained. FLIGHT INTEHNATIONAL 12 - 18 June, 1991 65
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