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Pilatus PC-12an operator's review by Philip Greenspun, ATP, CFII, in February 2015; updated July 2020 |
If every trip that you take starts with deciding who and what to leave behind, the PC-12 may be the right airplane for you. You can load it up with colleagues, friends, kids, and bicycles and still carry enough fuel to fly at least 1000 nautical miles.
Compared to a light or very light jet, important advantages of the PC-12 for non-professional pilots include the following:
A PC-12 with the standard executive interior costs roughly $5 million new, a minimum of $2 million for a nice used example with an executive interior, and $1.25-1.5 million at the bottom end of the market (combination of very high time, airliner interior with basic seats and no bathroom, run-out components, etc.).
For regional charter (FAR 135) use, the PC-12 enables you to quote prices that won't result in customers immediately hanging up the phone. The plane's historically high resale value means that you don't have to operate a crazy high number of hours per year to make the numbers work.
Our favorite trips so far: "Merry Christmas to the Sea Turtles" and again a year later.
Best angle of climb speed is 110 knots and best rate (Vy) is 120 knots. A typical cruise climb speed is 150 knots. The plane has a real-world cruise speed of about 255 knots and a real-world range of more than 1500 nautical miles. When working against a headwind it is typically the case that going higher than about 18,000' is not helpful. Thus it often makes sense to fly westbound VFR at 16,500' and (1) not be routed circuitously by ATC, and (2) enjoy a low-altitude cabin (see the pressurization section below). A pilot with poor proficiency can comfortably operate from 4000' runways, with average proficiency from 3000', and with high proficiency and clear approaches probably from 2000' runways.
A typical approach speed is about 80 knots with full flaps. The real PC-12 pilots like to land with flaps 30, but I think it is easier to make a smooth landing at flaps 40 (full flaps). A flaps-30 landing with some extra speed can result in 2000+ feet of floating over the runway. Trailing link landing gear means your passengers are going to be impressed with almost any landing. On a typical landing the brakes are barely used. Rather the prop is reversed and slows down the aircraft to about 40 mph.
Keep your feet either all the way back and just touching (with toes) the bottom ridge of the pedals. Or stretch your feet out so that the plane can be steered with heels and braked with toes. It is easy to touch the brakes inadvertently, e.g., when steering the plane down the centerline on takeoff. The brakes are powerful and it is easy to flat-spot the tires due to the lack of anti-skid.
Except for the 2020-and-beyond NGX, the PT6 engine is controlled with three levers: power, condition, manual override (MOR). In non-emergency situations you must push the condition lever from "ground idle" to "flight idle" when entering a runway and move it back from "flight idle" to "ground idle" after touching down. A lot of pilots mistakenly moved the condition lever all the way back to cut-off after landing. They heard the engine spooling down and reflexively put the lever back into "ground idle." After spending between $50,000 and $100,000 on a hot section they were able to fly their airplane again. Pilatus has a little mechanical interlock that is standard in newer airplanes and can be installed as a service bulletin in older planes to make this less likely, but it is a good illustration of some of the problems associated with using an engine designed in the late 1950s and not equipped with a FADEC.
A variety of hydraulic-mechanical systems keep the engine fueled and the prop pitched appropriately to maintain 1700 RPM except when taxiing. Thus there is no prop-speed lever.
The plane can be backed up for parking using reverse thrust. "If you touch the brakes at all you are going to get a tail strike," said my charter captain friend as he demonstrated this operation on a tight ramp in Middlebury, Vermont.
In some ways the PC-12 is more forgiving than a Cirrus or Bonanza. You can't forget to switch fuel tanks L/R because... there is no switch. The airplane balances the tanks automatically. Get too slow? There is a stick shaker, just as in a legacy Boeing 737. Get even slower than that? There is a stick pusher. Unlike in the Boeing 737 MAX, however, the pusher is a pusher rather than a silent trimmer. Also unlike in the 737 MAX, the pusher activates only when angle-of-attack sensors on both sides of the plane agree and when two separate computers agree. (The Pilatus system from circa 1990 is vastly superior in its engineering design to what Boeing was selling in 2018.)
Reverse thrust can be used down to indefinitely slow ground speeds. With turbojets there is some rationale for not using reverse thrust below a certain speed but apparently not with the PT-6 (perhaps it is the inertial separator?).
Pilatus fixed this problem at serial number 400, the "Series 10" airplanes. Then they reintroduced the problem again at serial number 683 with the PC-12/47 (4740 kg. max gross weight). Pilots of non-NG /47 planes have a dog's breakfast in two binders: a POH full of information for a plane they don't own (a PC-12/45) plus a supplement with information for the plane that they do own.
The NG has a clean POH with information only about the 4740 kg. gross weight airplane. Despite selling aircraft at 1/10th the price of Pilatus, Robinson Helicopter has managed to deliver aircraft with applicable manuals. When they bumped the 2400 lb. Raven I up to the 2500 lb. Raven II they made a new POH for the slight variant. So it can be done.
A variety of the avionics in the airplane, e.g., the King EFIS system, have massive books that are required to be accessible to the pilots at all times. These effectively use up all cockpit stowage space. At least some Part 135 operators have managed to get FAA approval to put PDF versions of these documents on a tablet. As a Part 91 operator it should be possible to do this and the ForeFlight app has a "import documents" feature so that they are available without switching apps on an iPad. See this directory for a collection of potentially relevant PDFs.
On the plus side, Pilatus makes a free app available for iOS that helps calculate weight-dependent speeds for takeoff and landing. The company also offers free iOS apps with emergency checklists.
A survey of the owner's group and SIMCOM reveals that the range of real-world empty weights is from about 6250 to 6500 for a /45 and at least 6600 for an NG. s/n 353, a /45 with the dual batteries, big oxygen bottle, traffic and terrain warning, etc. weighed in at 6462 lbs. Here's what we could carry before our Garmin G600 TXi installation:
The composite 5-blade prop option from MT will save about 4 lbs.; the Hartzell 5-blade prop is 7 lbs. lighter. You can increase payload by about 50 lbs. by trashing the legacy avionics in favor of a Garmin G600. You'll eventually be able to increase payload by about 40 lbs. per battery by switching from lead-acid to the new lithium-polymer batteries from True Blue Power.
You can reduce payload by about 50 lbs. by upgrading an older plane to the -67P engine, which has two heavy starter-generators instead of a starter-gen and an alternator.
By replacing the King EFIS system with a Garmin G600 TXi and ruthlessly eliminating systems such as active traffic and Stormscope, plus a re-weigh, we were able to bump full fuel payload to 914 lbs. Given that FBOs are seldom able to pump in the last 50-75 lbs., we use 1000 lbs. as an operating maximum.
Want an airplane that is smart enough to engage the yaw damper after takeoff and disengage it before landing so that you aren't fighting to stay on the centerline (not that I personally have ever forgotten to disengage it...)? Buy a Cirrus SR22-G6!
Trim runaway? The PC-12 is better than a Boeing 737 MAX in that it does try to warn you audibly, but it does so via a "warble tone". Why not a $2 speech synthesis chip that says "trim runaway"? The TI Speak & Spell was introduced in 1978 at a retail price of $50.
The front door is an airstair opposite the lav. Turn left to be a pilot, turn right if you're a passenger. As with most certified pressurized planes the door is secured with massive bolts that go through ribs. It might leak a little but it is never going to come open in flight.
The PC-12 is not an Embraer Phenom 300 with an externally serviced lav. The potty is essentially a bucket that someone (probably you, the pilot!) will have to pull out of the aircraft, empty, wash, etc. One practical solution is to take small kitchen trash bags and put them in the potty. Then pee into something like a TravelJohn that turns the liquid into a gel. When you get to your destination, grab the trash bag, tie the top, and discard into the nearest trash barrel.
In the Legacy airplanes all of the pressurization control is manual. The pilot sets a dial for the planned cruising altitude before departing and sets it for the planned landing altitude before descending. The NG model has a more advanced system that takes advantage of the fact that the avionics have been apprised of the destination airport and can look up the field elevation.
A great configuration for family travel is the rare 7-seat interior with four executive club seats and a three-seat bench across the back. The bench is wide enough to accommodate a 6'-tall person curled up and sleeping (I have tested this!). It should also work for belting multiple younger children together (should be legal if you're doing a hop that doesn't require oxygen in the event of a depressurization and don't exceed the total of 11 people in the airplane).
The aileron control forces in a /45 are absurdly heavy. In the /47 Pilatus added "Flettner tabs" that use aerodynamic forces to help move the ailerons and lighten the roll handling.
Pilots taller than 6' will find that the already-inadequate legroom of the /45 has been reduced by about 1.5 inches in the /47 (both /47 and /47NG versions). The seats are also considered less comfortable by those who fly both the /45 and /47 regularly.
(If you have long legs and $10 million, the PC-24 has a wonderfully spacious cockpit.)
If you're going to be mostly single-pilot and looking at an airplane roughly in the s/n 400 vintage it probably makes more sense to get a Series 9 plane.
The NG has a voice annunciation for a stuck relay saying "trim runaway" rather than emitting a confusing tone. The NG's pressurization system has two power sources and therefore won't stop working if a battery bus breaker trips. The NG gives a landing gear annunciation, not simply a horn that some pilots have misidentified as a stall warning. In addition to the Legacy gear warning scenarios, the "Gear" annunciation warning in an NG comes on when the radar altimeter reads less than 200' and power is reduced below 10 psi.
Friends who regularly fly both the NG and the Legacy PC-12s say that their personal favorite is the Legacy airplane upgraded with a modern Garmin GTN 625 GPS.
The NG is slightly faster than the Legacy but the new avionics are heavier than the old stuff and therefore the payload is slightly reduced. Most people say that the interior noise level of an NG is higher than on a Legacy PC-12. Here are our January 2014 measurements from s/n 1103:
Note that s/n 353 had more than 10,000 additional hours in its logbook compared to the NG and also a leaking rear door seal that was causing a whistle in the very back (subsequently fixed).
Phase Pilot Row 1 Row 2 Row 3 idle 79 75 73 70 taxi 74 72 70 takeoff 82 82 climb 84 82 6500'; 180 knots 88 82 80 79 7000'; 215 knots 88 87-88 85 84 10,000'; 208 knots 88 87 85 84 13,000'; 203 knots 87 86 85 83-84 15,000'; 204 knots 88 87 85 83 FL280; 170 knots 86 83 82 81 FL280; 128 knots 85 78 77 75-78
We had previously measured even lower noise levels in a 2006 model year Legacy PC-12, roughly 85 dBA at the pilot seats and 81 dBA in the back.
If you want the speed of the NG without the fancy Honeywell panel, Finnoff Aviation has an STC to put the big new engine on the old airplanes. It works out to at least $500,000 in additional costs compared to a simple overhaul.
If you want the fancy Honeywell panel without the speed of the NG, BendixKing AeroVue is a retrofit panel announced in 2014 for the King Air that will presumably be available one day for the PC-12.
If you want a Garmin panel, for about $175,000 you can have the 2008-technology G600 on both sides and the GTN 650/750 stack. This is physically much smaller than the AeroVue screens, which means the G600 looks a bit ridiculous in the huge PC-12 panel... like Derek Zoolander's cell phone. Also, there are no PC-12 simulators that include the G600 panel. Finally, there is no way to certify the G600 for RVSM. So we think it makes sense to wait for the AeroVue and/or the next generation of Garmin products.
Other potentially interesting options are a glass cockpit with autothrottles from IS&S (to be certified in 2016) and the Avilon flight deck from Sandel (announced for the King Air, but not the PC-12).
The NGX has some slight user interface updates to the Honeywell avionics suite in the NG.
The TBM is a nice airplane for an owner-operator who typically takes two passengers in the back on short trips (no bathroom!).
The Meridian makes sense if you're buying a used one for under $1 million and the mission is two people in the front with some bags in the back.
The King Air 200 is the version that is comparable to the PC-12 in size. Per-hour operating costs are higher on the King Air due to the fact that two PT6 engines are spinning. If you're willing to invest in extensive multi-engine training, spend a lot of time flying over water, and/or will be operating a small number of hours per year, the King Air may be worth a look. A 35-year-old King Air 200 can be purchased for between $500,000 and $1 million and will handle the same missions as a PC-12. One good thing about the King Air is that there are at least two integrated glass flight decks available. Garmin created a G1000 system for the King Air back in 2008, with an upgrade cost of about $300,000 (after a $50,000 rebate; remember to save your receipt!). The King Air was the first airframe for which BendixKing announced the availability of their AeroVue glass panel.
Before you get too excited about saving $1 million in capital costs, remember that (1) there are reasons why Beech went bankrupt and Pilatus kept growing, (2) if you buy a 35-year-old plane today you'll be trying to sell a 45-year-old plane one day in the future, and (3) the buyer of your plane probably won't be able to get financing (aircraft lenders are most interested in planes that are less than 20 years old), (4) the resale value of a PC-12 will be correspondingly higher.
The successful Epic composite kit airplane will be turning into the certified E1000 six-seater at some point in 2016 (New Year's Eve at 11:58 pm?). This is a nice G1000-equipped plane with PC-12 speed and similar range but... no bathroom.The machine was finally certified in November 2019. I would be concerned about interior noise given the composite aircraft and monster engine.
2019 update: the first flight is delayed until 2020 due to a delay from GE in the engine program (investors: GE stock actually went down roughly 50 percent in real terms during Jeff Immelt's 16 years of CEOship!).
If you need the interior space and range of the PC-12, but don't need the ability to land on short and unconventional runways, the Cessna Citation V series planes may be worth a look. A Citation Encore can be purchased for roughly the same price as a PC-12, but requires a greater commitment to training. Despite the fact that it is possible to get a single pilot type rating for the Citation V, due to the fact that the speeds are higher than in a very light jet, it should probably be operated with a two-pilot crew at all times.
If cabin noise is a priority, consider either a Legacy or an NGX (with its 1500 RPM cruise prop speed).
If you're buying an older airplane, look for one where the engine is run out or has recently been overhauled. A privately operated plane with, say, 2200 hours since overhaul may seem like a good deal but if Pratt & Whitney hasn't seen the engine for 10 years you don't have the latest revisions of the various little controllers. On the other hand, high-time engines (after the second overhaul) may have components that will time out or cycle out. Pratt generally won't sell its power-by-the-hour program for any engine beyond its second overhaul.
If the older airplane has been operated by an owner-pilot budget for a lot of expensive-to-fix defects that even the most diligent pre-buy inspection probably won't catch. There are a lot of systems on the PC-12 that can operate intermittently and/or generate intermittent warnings. A private owner anxious to save $30,000 at each annual might have learned to live with a lot of quirks that he knows aren't real safety issues. A plane that was operated 135 by a professional crew is less likely to have hidden gremlins. Each intermittent item will cost about $5,000 for an attempted fix (module swap from Pilatus).
You'll have to agree on a price before you can put the plane into a pre-buy, so ask for a status spreadsheet showing remaining calendar months and flight hours/cycles on all of the components. There are 10-year items, such as a wing demate, that can cost about $80,000 and should be factored into a purchase price if recently done or coming up soon. You might want to ask for a clause in the purchase agreement under "aircraft condition" with the following form:
current on all manufacturers' required maintenance programs and inspection schedules (including all calendar and hourly inspections through at least 12 months and 150 hours beyond the delivery date) with no extensions or deferrals, and in compliance with all applicable FAA airworthiness directives and mandatory service bulletins (or manufacturer's equivalent) that have been issued with respect to the Aircraft and its systems, components, accessories or equipment, which are due to be completed on or before the Closing Date including the completion of the Seller Inspections;
Remember that there are no bargains in the PC-12 world. Pilatus put its main competitor, Beechcraft, into bankruptcy. Now the company is busy selling military trainers (PC-21) and the short field champion PC-24 turbojet. PC-12 production has never been so high that it floods the market. When PC-12s get too shabby for toting around rich people, used airplanes are in demand for cargo and medevac, which puts a floor on the used PC-12 market that doesn't exist for the Piper Meridian and TBM markets.
If you join the MyPilatus support Web site the company will make available to you a moderately specific-to-your-airplane pilot's operating handbook in PDF form. SIMCOM gives you all of the training guides as PDFs and hardcopy.
Until the ADS-B mandate, we used a Stratus ADS-B receiver and AHRS and mounted it on top of the cabinet just behind the lav. This gave us datalink weather and synthetic terrain, though it would have been nicer if ForeFlight had a simplified "in-flight mode" interface.
One thing that did not work as planned was the idea of using T-Mobile cellular service so that ForeFlight updates would trickle into the iPads and they would be current without us removing them from the plane. It turned out that the data transfers are too big and take too long for this to be practical. Another thing that doesn't work out is that ADS-B, despite the billions of tax dollars spent, apparently has very little bandwidth. Thus one gets weather only for nearby airports and a handful of big airports farther away. This makes it a great system for a Cessna 172 where you're probably not going more than 200 miles, but not a good substitute for XM weather in a long-range airport. Want to know how the TAF or METAR of your destination is evolving on a 1000-mile trip? Call Flight Service on 122.2! (Or land and have an avionics shop put in a $10,000 XM receiver.)
Our thinking on the 28V outlets, rather than aviation-grade USB power supplies attached to the airframe, was to preserve for ourselves the option to use a handheld Garmin with a super-bright screen, much easier to read in bright sun than an iPad and also immune to overheating in sunlight. We never did get the handheld Garmin, but this turned out well when a USB cigarette lighter supply failed: we bought a new one for $20. It worked out ever better when USB-A was superseded by USB-C. Instead of a $1,000+ avionics project, we ordered a couple of USB-C power adapters from Amazon.
We're still getting used to the system, but so far we're impressed by the presentation of ADS-B weather. And the panel looks a lot cleaner and less intimidating. However, the downside of getting rid of the "give me a pointer" button from the King system is that it will be at least 6 touches of the PFD to accomplish the same "give me a pointer" function. Maybe you didn't like hunting for the arrow button amidst the sea of buttons on the old King EFIS system, but now you're hunting for the right menu.
Screen resolution on the PFDs is low: only 720x1280 pixels. This is a number that is tough to find in the Garmin marketing materials and the first time that you try to read an approach plate. Due to the landscape orientation of the PFD and the fact that you still need to fly the plane, a full plate cannot be rendered legibly on the PFD. The 15-year-old Avidyne MFD on the Cirrus SR20 dealt with this low resolution issue with a soft key on the bezel to cycle among four "plate view" modes. Garmin invites the pilot to pinch to zoom and then touch to pan. Maybe this is fun if you're waiting for a subway train, but not while you're trying to pilot an aircraft.
(The GTN 750 is not a viable substitute; its resolution is a feeble 600x708.)
The G600 TXi does not integrate well with the Legacy King autopilot. When flying an ILS approach, for example, the system won't switch automatically from GPS to LOC. If the pilot switches manually, this clears out the autopilot modes, which then have to be reengaged by pressing buttons on the autopilot control head. (Supposedly this will be improved when/if Garmin certifies the GFC 600 autopilot for the PC-12.)
The actual task of piloting is harder than with the fully integrated G1000 flight deck on a newer Cirrus, in which the current power setting appears on the top left of the PFD. The Pilatus pilot with a G600 TXi still must divide his or her attention between the PFD (attitude) and the EIS (power in inches of torque).
Bottom line: You may end up still needing to brief approaches in ForeFlight, at which point why not just saving $150,000+ and keep the King EFIS system?
Given that the PC-12 is a single-engine plane and that there are quite a few potential reasons to lose power from a PT6, it would be nice if either the Garmin G600 TXi or ForeFlight had the "guide me to the nearest runway" feature of the Xavion app.
Note that these numbers are virtually identical to the measurements that we made of s/n 353 with the 4-blade Hartzell. The lack of real-world noise reduction from the MT Prop was confirmed by various pilots we've talked to who have flown both configurations. The MT Prop may reduce vibration and the noise spectrum is supposedly different.
Phase Pilot Row 1 Row 2 Row 3 idle 79 75 73 70 taxi 74 72 70 takeoff 82 82 climb 84 82 6500'; 180 knots 88 82 80 79 7000'; 215 knots 88 87-88 85 84 10,000'; 208 knots 88 87 85 84 13,000'; 203 knots 87 86 85 83-84 15,000'; 204 knots 88 87 85 83 FL280; 170 knots 86 83 82 81 FL280; 128 knots 85 78 77 75-78
As of late 2015, Hartzell began shipping a 5-blade composite prop that is standard equipment on new airplanes. This has the same blade length as the 4-blade prop and therefore does not have a reduced tip speed. However, Hartzell managed to cut cabin noise as much as 2 dBA depending on the phase of flight, position within the aircraft, and power setting. That's not nothing, but the PC-12 will still be very noisy for the pilots and moderately noisy for passengers compared to a light jet (76-80 dBA in the cabin; 76-78 dBA in the cockpit).
It costs about $65,000 to upgrade an older plane with the new 5-blade Hartzell prop. N353PT got this prop in December 2015. Here's what we have noticed so far:
A 300-hour/annual inspection costs a minimum of $8000 if absolutely nothing is broken or worn. A more reasonable budget would be $25-50,000. Budget an additional $23,000 per year or so for a warranty on the Honeywell Legacy avionics and various Honeywell mechanical components such as pressurization valves. (Note that in 2018 Pilatus turned what had been a 100/150-hour inspection schedule into a 300-hour schedule. The typical owner-flown aircraft therefore will need scheduled maintenance only once/year.)
One big challenge in maintaining the PC-12 is that anything involving electronics doesn't seem to have been designed for maintenance. If a warning light comes on intermittently and a maintenance shop can't duplicate the behavior in a hangar there is generally no information logged by the aircraft about the signals present at various locations that led up to the warning light. The mechanic is left to wonder "Is it a bad wire connection? Is it a bad board full of relays and logic?" This leads to a certain amount of hopeful board-swapping more or less at random. Board swaps tend to introduce additional problems because the Pilatus pool of spare boards contains many that were previously returned by customers as broken. A board that works fine during a bench test at Pilatus can be are stamped "good" and shipped out to a different customer. In a world where computers and memory are cheap there should be almost no situation in which an airplane cant self-diagnose, e.g., "at 12:32:47Z there was a mismatch between information on Board A and information in the central warning system, therefore replace Wire A127" or "the signals on Board B should have resulted in Relay B4 closing but the output of that Relay indicates that it did not close, so replace Replay B4 and/or Board B."
Owners report that it can take 1-2 years to resolve electronic or hydraulic problems that are not obvious hard failures. This is consistent with our own experience. The starting control system failed for us in September 2014 in that the starter did not disconnect once the engine reached 50-percent Ng. Thus it was impossible to get the main generator online without manually resetting the starter. The problem recurred intermittently but the system tested okay during multiple authorized service center visits. No information was logged that would have allowed anyone to determine whether the problem was (a) the EIS system (about $8,000 to swap), (b) the starter control board (about $5,000 to swap), or (c) various relays that are involved (about $2,000 to swap). In April 2016, more than 1.5 years after the problem first occurred, we decided to replace the starter controller. Pilatus sent us a board from its spares pool that had been pulled off serial number 295, i.e., a plane that FAA records show to been built in 1999. Assuming that Pilatus had ordered boards in batches, this one would therefore have been somewhere between 17 and 20 years old. The "defect/investigation report" that came along with the at-least-17-year-old board said that in 2012 at 2200 hours "Customer Reports Aircraft Will Not Crank." The problem was traced to "Resistor R24 (15 Ohms) has changed his value to 800 Ohms." The 13-year-old component was replaced, some updates were performed, the board was bench-tested, and then put on a shelf until 2016. The good news is that the board swap seemed to fix the problem, but how can it work in the long run to put circuit boards with such old components out there? Eventually capacitors and resistors simply fall apart.
We had a similar situation starting in 2016 with a spurious flap overspeed warning. After multiple maintenance interventions and the purchase of a board swap ($thousands) that was unnecessary (did not solve the problem; old board tested fine on the Pilatus bench), the problem was solved by re-seating a loose wire.... in 2019.
If it isn't a Pilatus part you might be able to save considerably by dealing with it outside of the Pilatus parts network. For example, a starter-generator exchange for our airplane was quoted at $10,000 from Pilatus in Colorado. Yet Ametek can overhaul one for about $2,000 if you can tolerate a week (including shipping) of downtime.
If you've got a Honeywell panel you may wish to purchase a fixed-price service plan for the avionics. This is about $17,000 per year on a legacy aircraft. For another roughly $5,000 per year you get coverage for Honeywell-produced mechanical parts, such as for pressurization.
Pilatus Colorado is responsive to inquiries regarding how the wiring is supposed to work, but no amount of diligence can compensate for the fact that the airplane was not designed to be self-diagnostic (the PC-24 jet is, however).
The paint shops that seem to be the most experienced with PC-12s are West Star in Colorado, Hillaero in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Duncan Aviation, also in Lincoln. The going rate for a strip and repaint at a big shop seems to be roughly $85,000.
We have visited Hillaero in March 2015 and were very impressed with their work on some medevac King Airs, one of which had come back for a touch-up after seven years of 1,000 hours per year. They are a factory-authorized shop for painting new PC-12s.
schemedesigners.com maintains a list of paint shops that their clients have used and liked. Note that some of these shops may be more accustomed to smaller non-pressurized all-metal aircraft, which are simpler to paint than a PC-12.
We had our plane repainted in 2019 at SureFlight, which is the preferred paint shop for a local major PC-12 operator. It was a complex design from Scheme Designers and required clearcoat overall. The cost was at least 30 percent less than quoted by the "usual suspects" and the quality was rated superb by some critical experts (e.g., director of maintenance at a PC-12 charter operator, mechanics at a big PC-12 shop). Click on the photo at the top of the article for a high-res image of SureFlight's work.
See also "What I learned about aircraft paint at Oshkosh".
Who loves noise and vibration enough to fly a turboprop more than 20,000 hours? The Royal Flying Doctors in Australia and the Ornge air ambulance service in Canada (hence Levaero's experience with high-time airframes).
If the plane isn't going into a hangar, it is easier to put foil heat shields into the windows after parking. We have tried Kennon press-in friction-fit foil shields. They were a bit loose when new and failed completely after one year (would not stay in). One big PC-12 operator uses Sun-Foil, which rely on a combination of fraction and suction cups. Bruce's also makes some that we haven't tried, but probably should.
It is difficult to cool down the cockpit sufficiently in flight on a sunny day. Even when the passengers are freezing with a cabin temp of 17 or 18C, the cockpit will be uncomfortably warm. The fit can be a challenge, but people seem to be very happy with Jet Shades, a press-in window tint.
For the engine, prop, plugs, etc., Bruce's is a safe choice. We once had a rigid plastic AOA cover that we would dearly love to find again (would protect this fragile and expensive instrument from a hangar knock). Some 135 operators don't like these in case pilots leave the Probes heat on by mistake (ruin the AOA with melted plastic!), but we thought this was great.