A couple of months ago, Lorenzo left a comment on a post about the problems affecting the Eclipse FADECs software. As a safety engineer by Pilatus, he knows first hand what all of that is about. Pilatus… the company making the PC-12, but also the Porter, the PC-21 military trainer… what a dream. The ensuing e-mail discussion resulted in a very kind offer to visit the factory in Stans, in the vicinity of Luzern, Switzerland. I had to wait for a couple of months because of organizational issues, but finally, on the 3rd of October, I drove there with two colleagues to meet with Lorenzo, and visit the site.

The road trip from Germany was five hours long, so we first went for a lunch in a close-by restaurant. You can certainly guess what we talked about… It quickly became obvious to me that Lorenzo is seriously passionated about flying (he’s preparing his PPL on a SuperCub in a field in the heart of the Alps), and has extensive knowledge of the Pilatus family. He’s particularly a fan of the PT6 engine that powers the whole range of Pilatus aircraft.

We then moved to the first spot of the visit, where the metallic parts are created out of aluminium blocks. Pilatus actually builds aircraft “from scratch”. The blocks of aluminiums on this pictures are an aircraft to be, and the small cylinders are made of aluminium chips to be recycled. The production hall is fully equipped to factor any kind of pieces, as the ones below… Pilatus is still a mid-size, family like company, with approximately 1000 employees. The proximity between all departments makes the whole development process really quick.

On our way to the composite workshop, we saw an historical aircraft: the first PC-12 that was ever built, which is now on display between the various buildings… The location of the site itself, between the mountains and the lake, is rather exceptional, and creates a unique mixture of rural, agricultural environment, with high-tech industry.

Even if the aircraft are mostly made of aluminium, they are partly made of composite parts (did you say plastic ?), which are also produced on site. Injection and “cooking” are all made there. Pilatus is also a partner of the Sauber Petronas Forumal One team, and some parts of the car are produced here as well.

The next step was the assembly hall, where the wings and horizontal plane are assembled with the main part of the fuselage. Landing gear, avionics, doors, flaps, turbine, propeller, de-ice boots also get assembled, like a giant puzzle. Despite all the automatisation of the pieces production process, some wokers were giving the “final touch” manually, to make sure that everything is perfect.

One small room on the side of the hall has a very specific purpose: preparation of the ejector seats for the military trainers. That’s quite a specialized job, and it has many safety relevant aspects. The guys working there are nevertheless doing it with a touch of fun, as shown by the cartoon on the door.

The two next hangars were stricly “NO PHOTO” areas. The first one was the avionics simulator for the PC-21. The equipment there contains all the standard components of a PC-21 cockpit, including the head-up display (HUD), while the rest of the systems are simulated. The avionics developers also have a full-size PC-21 cockpit with three beamers for the outside view to test and validate their development. We could see it in action, and there were some surprising elements for me. For example, the airspeed and altitude indicators on the PFD are not tapes, but depicted as needles.

The next hangar was the PC-21 workshop. The only picture of a PC-21 I get was on the tarmac. In the hangar, we could see it very closely, including the engine, avionics bay (much easier to access that the Jumbolino’s one…), and the cockpit. We could even climb on the wing, and have a very close look to the cockpit. The PC-21 has been designed to offer flying characteristics as close as possible to those of jets, to make the transition easier. It even includes some computer-assisted controls that automatically compensate for torque and P-factors, making it a single engine propeller aircraft for which no “right foot” action is required on take-off !

This objective is perfectly fulfilled, as some pilots alread transitionned directly from the PC-21 to jet fighters. As we were leaving the site, one of them was flying overhead, and integrated the pattern by flying rather aggressive turns with high bank angles. Apart from the propeller noise, it could have been a jet…

The final step of our visit was the completion hall. This is in a brand new hangar, inaugurated one month ago, which is almost all made of wood. The place is really amazing: not less than 16 PC-12 were getting completed. As an average, one gets out of the factory every two days. As a fan of this aircraft, I was feeling like in heaven.

One of the aircraft there was undergoing a pressurization test. An external compressor was pressurizing it, probably beyond the normal pressure differential, to make sure that all components were able to sustain it. To protect the workers and the environment, it was covered with a net, to catch any part that could pop-out. Needless to say, the test was sucessful, and totally uneventful.

With so many PC-12s around, I did not knew anymore in which direction to look, nor what to photograph. I made the now very classical propeler spinner photograph (click here and here to read more about that), but this time the cone is so large that you can see me in the picture. The second photograph below is from the weather radar dome, mounted at the end of the right-hand wingtip. This is a rather unusual location, on twin engine aircraft, it’s normally in the nose, but this is not possible on a single engine aircraft, because the engine is there. It has to be far away from the fuselage to have a good view in both direction, so that’s why it’s so far away.

This visit was really exciting, and I learned a lot, both on aircraft fabrication and how companies should be managed. The relative small size of Pilatus makes it reactive, and the excellent “corporate spirit” – I hate these words, that’s sounds too artificial – is certainly one of the cornerstone of its success. Wandering around guided by Lorenzo was really like visiting a large family business, where each one knows almost everybody.

Definitely a memorable day, and one of the best by-produts of runing this blog. Thank you again Lorenzo for taking the time, sharing you passion, and for opening all these doors for us.

Click here to view all the photos I took during this visit.