Pilatus has received European and US type certification for its PC-24
business jet, and is preparing to hand over the first aircraft to New
Hampshire-based launch customer PlaneSense.
The approvals come four years after the
superlight twin was unveiled by the Swiss airframer – its first
business jet programme after almost eight decades of producing
turboprop-powered aircraft.
“Obtaining certification is our reward
for so many years of untiring effort,” says Pilatus chairman Oscar Schwenk. “In
2013 we announced that the PC-24 would be ready in 2017, and now, shortly
before the end of the year, we have achieved exactly that."
He notes that while project involved
“considerable risk”, Pilatus “always believed 100% in the platform” and was
“prepared to go all the way to the limits of what we can reasonably do to
ensure its success”.
Schwenk describes the certification
requirements for the the PC-24 – which Pilatus dubs a “super-versatile jet” due
to its short-runway performance – as “extremely rigorous”.
The flight-test campaign kicked off in
May 2015, and the three test aircraft have flown more than 2,200h, with Pilatus
taking the aircraft “to the very boundaries of its limits and even beyond”,
says the airframer.
Despite the challenges, an upbeat
Schwenk says the PC-24 has “achieved or exceeded” the performance
characteristics promised to its 84 customers. He cites, as an example, the
aircraft’s maximum speed of 440kt (815 km/h), which compares with the “contractually
agreed” 425kt.
The company has invested more than
Swfr500 million ($502 million) in the PC-24 development programme and has spent
a further Swfr150 million on a new assembly hall, surface treatment centre and
milling machines in Stans, where eight PC-24s are currently being assembled.
In the USA – a market Pilatus expects
will make up half of all PC-24 deliveries – the company has built a new
completion and support facility at its Broomfield, Colorado base.
The airframer is planning to deliver 23
aircraft in 2018 – including three to PlaneSense.
The US fractional ownership company has
ordered six of the $8.9 million, Williams
International FJ44-4A-powered jets. The first example, which will carry
the registration N124AF, will be flown to the USA in January for its official
handover.
“It has to complete its technical
acceptance phase, and there is still some customisation to do on the aircraft
before we can formally accept it,” says PlaneSense founder and chief executive
George Antoniadis.
Based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
PlaneSense is a long-standing Pilatus customer and is the largest commercial
operator of the PC-12NG, with a fleet of 36 aircraft. Since starting operations
in 1996, PlaneSense has taken delivery of 64 units, with the latest arriving in
early December.
Antoniadis describes the PC-24 as “an
intelligent, versatile and very well-built aircraft, in a class of its own”.
He says the company is “eager” to add
the aircraft to its jet programme, for which the Nextant 400XTi light-twin is
currently being deployed as an interim platform.
“Our pilots will begin training in
January on the PC-24 simulator based at FlightSafety [International's] facility
in Dallas,” Antoniadis adds. It requires US Federal Aviation Administration
approval to operate the aircraft under both fractional ownership and charter
requirements.
The remanufactured 400XTis will be
phased out once PlaneSense has a built a critical mass of PC-24s, beyond its
existing six orders.
Antoniadis is keen to expand the PC-24
backlog, and hopes to place a double-digit order as soon as Pilatus re-opens
the orderbook. This could be as soon as the NBAA convention in October 2018.
The first batch of 84 aircraft sold out within 36h of the airframer starting to
take commitments in 2014.
(Evangle Luo of TTFLY shared with you)
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