Aircraft
PC-12 Popularity Helps Pilatus Launch Jet
The demonstrator PC-12 painted in Otto Lilienthal theme honors the German pioneer aviator known as the “Glider King,” and founder of the science of wing aerodynamics.
The demonstrator PC-12 painted in Otto Lilienthal theme honors the German pioneer aviator known as the “Glider King,” and founder of the science of wing aerodynamics.

It takes 70,251 rivets and 5,000 man-hours to fabricate a Pilatus PC-12 single-engine turboprop, and when each PC-12 rolls into the final assembly process in Halle 9 at Pilatus’s Stans, Switzerland factory, the precise time and date when the airplane will be finished is noted on a label attached to the fuselage. This is no rough estimate, and Pilatus (Chalet A122) means exactly what the label says, according to Pilatus sales and marketing executive Fred Muggli. If the label, for example, for PC-12 serial number 1418, says May 22 at 1500, then that is precisely when that aircraft will be done.

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