In early May I bought a 2010 Pilatus PC12/47E (NG), s/n 1178, with a Pratt PT6A-67P engine. It is equipped with an MT seven-blade prop and the American Aviation pitot cowl STC. Prior to the Pilatus, I owned a Cessna 425 Conquest for ten years and 3000 hours. For this Pirep, I’ll give a few comparisons to my Conquest since that is the turbine airplane with which I am most familiar.
To begin, I considered a new airplane for several years. (See my thread here:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=208400). At first, I thought I wanted a King Air C90GT since it seemed to fit my mission best. Then I was convinced by the Beechtalk brethren that I “might as well” go to a B200 since the overall cost of ownership was similar and the fuel system, range and pressurization was better. I always wanted a King Air, so with that in mind, I hired Chip McClure of Jet Acquisitions to find me a good B200. However, due to the width of my hangar door, I couldn’t buy a B200 with winglets – it just wouldn’t fit. And no, I couldn’t widen my door any more than it already was.
Over several months, Chip found a few B200’s that were off-market, however, they all had winglets. At the same time, I began considering a Pilatus rather than the B200. The more I investigated, the Pilatus seemed to fit my mission perfectly. Without going into detail about the PC12 versus the B200, I ultimately changed plans and asked Chip to switch to a PC12.
We quickly found a nice 2010 model and made a deal. Chip was extremely helpful and has continued to be a major asset in my first few months of Pilatus ownership.
All PC12’s from around 2008 to 2023 have the Honeywell Apex avionics system, as did mine. However, due to time constraints, I chose to do my initial training at Executive Flight Training in Austin because of the short drive from my house and the three-day course schedule. Unfortunately, their simulator had the old legacy avionics and not the Honeywell Apex system. In hindsight, training in a non-Apex simulator was a big mistake. I should have gone to SIMCOM in Florida for five days and used their simulator with the Apex system, as moving from Garmin avionics to Honeywell has been a major hill to climb.
As of August 23rd of this year, I’ve put a little over a hundred hours on the airplane and the guy who flies my employees when I’m not available has flown 50 hours. In that time, I can tell you I absolutely love the airplane – and when I say “the airplane” I don’t mean the avionics. The airplane is awesome. It does 260 to 270 knots and can carry a crap-load of stuff. There are no CG issues and it’s as solid as you could ask. What’s amazing is, compared to my Conquest, it’s bigger, faster, flies higher and burns
less fuel. Where the Conquest was 250-260 knots on around 60 gph, the Pilatus cruises 260-270 knots and burns around 55 gph. The airplane is truly phenomenal. However, the avionics absolutely suck.
To begin, when preparing for my first flight with the airplane at my home base, the AGM2 card failed. An AGM card is a printed circuit board about the size of a standard iPad and is mounted vertically below the floor near the cabin door. From what I understand, this is the Achilles heel of the Apex system and a constant source of frustration. Fortunately, I transferred the Honeywell MSP program, aka the “extended warranty” of the avionics system from the previous owner, so the AGM card was covered by warranty. However, it still cost me $4200 in labor for Cutter Aviation to drive from San Antonio to my hangar and install an exchange card. The airplane was down for about a week. Then, a week later, the AGM1 card failed. This time, I flew it to San Antonio and saved a few hundred dollars in labor cost. The airplane was down for another week.
After these failures, I wanted to make sure I was enrolled in the Honeywell MSP program, otherwise known as the “Mafia Security Program”. The reason I call it the mafia program is because you pay for “protection” from Honeywell. If you are the unlucky owner of a Honeywell Apex system and an AGM card fails, the cost to replace it will be north of $100,000 - I think around $118,000. However, for the low-low price of $28,000 per year, you can get “protection” from this absurd cost. Local lore holds that the item failing on these AGM cards is a ten-cent diode that gets re-soldered onto the circuit board when you send in your old one.
But wait, there’s more. When I first signed up for the Honeywell MSP program, they quoted me not $28,000, the amount the previous owner paid, but $42,600!
Per year! When I climbed down from the ceiling, I asked why the cost increased so much. The lovely Honeywell lady with whom I was speaking couldn’t give me an answer, so, over the next few weeks, I made several calls and got the help of Chip and the previous owner, who knew people high up at Honeywell.
Finally, after nearly a month, Honeywell offered me the same deal at $28,000, but the only way they would give me that price was if I signed a three-year contract with them. I can’t tell you how infuriated it made me with Honeywell. I assume the three-year contract was because word-on-the-street is Garmin is working on a retrofit STC to rip out the entire Apex system and install a G3000. I tell you this – I’ll be the first guy in line to buy the Garmin STC after dealing with Honeywell. They are absolutely terrible!
But not only does Honeywell as a company suck, the actual Apex system sucks just as badly. Sure, you hear Pilatus pilots tell you it’s a good system, but I’m telling you - it’s not. The Apex system has to be the most non-intuitive, complicated and clunky computer system invented by man. I’ve heard people say, “Oh, it’s like going from an Apple to an Android”. No, it’s not. It’s like going from an Apple to an old DOS computer system requiring you to learn programming code. I can’t imagine the Apollo 11 moon lander was more difficult to learn than this stupid Apex system. It’s freakin’ terrible. And knowing that I get to pay $28,000 per year to keep it just infuriates me that much more.
Plus, here are a few other things endearing me so much to the Apex system. To begin, it takes forever to boot-up. You have to turn on the Standby Battery, then go drink a cup of coffee while it decides whether it’s going to work for the day. It’s also glitchy. Like, weird stuff just comes and goes. For instance, occasionally the CAS message box gives me a CPCS (Cabin Pressurization System) fault. Then it goes away. WTF? And then occasionally I get a TAWS fault message that just goes away. One time, I got amber-colored X’s across both fuel quantity indicators. I taxied back, shut down, crawled up in the hell-hole, unplugged the batteries, waited five minutes, plugged them back in and – wallah, everything worked again. No, that wasn’t a pain-in-the-ass at all…? And when landing at Panama City, on final approach at 500’ agl, rather than announcing “500” through the audio system, the damn thing starts booming, “Terrain, terrain! Pull up, pull up!” WTF?!! It did that through the entire visual approach and landing. The only way to make it go away was to hold down the “Terrain Inhibit” button. The passenger in the right seat had to sit there with his finger on the button the entire time.
And about that “500” audio message it gives on landing… It’s so freakin’ loud, it scares the crap out of me every time I land. And guess what – there’s no way to turn the volume down on the damn thing! So when I’m landing, I just tense my shoulders and get ready to be yelled at: “500!!!”. Holy crap!
And finally, to update the avionics database, I have to set aside several hours of my day to do it. It might work on the first time, or it might work on the fourth time. Or it might not work on that day because the moon is in the wrong phase. It’s terrible.
I have so little confidence in the Apex system, I mounted a Garmin Aera 660 handheld GPS to the left-side glareshield. How stupid is that? Ugh, it’s so frustrating.
One thing I will say about the Apex system – the autopilot is damn good. It’s very precise and flies the airplane very smoothly. I have no complaints about the autopilot, other than in turbulence it occasionally kicks off and hands me the airplane. It’s not bad, I’m just not used to that.
What else can I say about the airplane? Yes, the PC12 is everything you can imagine. The ride in the back seat is sublime. It’s quiet compared to anything else I’ve owned. It has the same sound in the back as an airliner only maybe slightly louder, but not by much. And when riding in the back, the flap motor and the gear sound just like an airliner. I say this because I believe it makes passengers feel more comfortable – almost familiar.
Control harmony while hand-flying is just fine - a little lighter in the ailerons than my Conquest but in a good way. It does require a lot of trimming, but that’s no big deal. The seven-blade prop on my airplane is quiet, but I don’t know if it really adds any performance over a five-blade. They say the climb rate is better, but I don’t know if that’s true. I’d venture to guess the climb rate is marginally better than a five-blade prop, but I bet it’s one or two knots slower in cruise.
I love the slow approach speeds – around 90 knots on final slowing to the low 80’s across the numbers. It’s just crazy the thing flies so slow. And the baggage door – holy cow that thing is convenient. The lavatory is perfect, but it can be a little tight moving out of the way of the doors when they swing into position.
As for maintenance, I haven’t had any issues in the short time I’ve owned the airplane, but I do have a couple of squawks I’m saving for the annual inspection – nothing major.
There’s just not much else to say about the PC12. The airplane is great and the avionics suck. It is what it is. I can see why these things are as expensive as they are and why they hold their value. There’s just no other airplane that will do what the Pilatus does for the money. Yet.
