Pilatus

Pilatus has worked from one site at Stans, in Switzerland, since 1939, when the company opened there as a maintenance shop for the Swiss air force.

Pilatus has stayed at Stans since 1939. It began there servicing Swiss air force aircraft and now designs and builds its own. The PC-12, a single-engine turboprop, was launched in the 1980s and first flew in 1991. The PC-24 followed, shown in 2013 and certified by EASA and the FAA on the same day in December 2017. Both aircraft were drawn from the outset to work from short and unprepared strips, and the PC-24 carries a rear cargo door as standard. The brief is the same in each; what changes between them is the powerplant.

Pilatus appears twice in this fleet, once in Turboprop and once in Light Jet. The pairing is not a range. It is one design brief expressed at two speeds, 290 knots and 440, and the two aircraft agree about far more than they differ on. Both were drawn from the start for short and unprepared strips, and the jet did not trade that away in order to become a jet. A reader choosing inside this brand therefore has an unusually narrow decision, because both were built for the same kind of destination and disagree mainly about how long the sector should take.