Pilatus engineers recently developed and
certified a new PC-12 Master Maintenance Plan to give greater flexibility with
regard to the timing of required inspections and maintenance.
The plan applies to all PC-12 Series, and will
reduce required maintenance labour by 20-40%.
Based on a detailed analysis of in-service
fleet experience of over 6.8 million hours, scheduled maintenance intervals have
been extended from 100/150 hours to 300 hours. Pilatus PC-12 operators flying
300 hours per year will see a reduction in scheduled maintenance labour time of
approximately 20%, while high utilisation operators flying more than 800 hours
annually will save up to 40%.
Ignaz Gretener,
Vice President of Pilatus’ General Aviation Business Unit said: “We know that
low direct operating costs are one of the most important reasons for purchasing
a PC-12. Finding ways to continually lower DOCs in order to maintain that
benefit has always been a high priority for us.”
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The PC-12 EBACE demo model sported an
eye-catching livery designed by Swiss paper-cutting artist, Esther Gerber. It
reflects two essential values embodied by the PC-12: Swiss craftsmanship and
perfection. |
Custom maintenance intervals
The new Maintenance Plan lists all scheduled
maintenance tasks with maximum intervals, allowing operators to package these
tasks according to their own specific operations. For operators who want a
pre-defined inspection programme, the new maintenance policy also provides the
tasks pre-packaged in six different intervals - 300 Flight Hours (FH), 300 FH/12
Months (MO), 600 FH, 600 FH/12 MO, 1200 FH/12 MO, 2400 FH/24 MO where the flight
hours or calendar time intervals are understood as 'whichever comes first'.
Gretener continued, “We know that Pilatus can
only be successful if our customers are successful. That is why we remain
intensely focused on helping PC-12 operators to get the most value from their
aircraft, and on retaining that value throughout the entire period of
ownership.”
The latest version of the PC-12 NG comes
equipped with a new weather radar with increased range. Further
reliability-enhancing improvements and customer-specific requirements have also
been incorporated in several areas.
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