The jet is Swiss, yet after flying it over three days in wildly varying weather, traffic, and runway conditions, we came away feeling that the appropriate analogy is Canadian. It’s as if Paul Bunyan became a Savile Row suit-wearing investment banker—a regular at the most sophisticated business functions and social affairs, yet would periodically don a red-checked wool shirt, blue jeans and boots, tuck Babe the Blue Ox under his arm and head for the backwoods.
The Pilatus PC-24 is a sleek, luxurious, large-cabin, large cargo area, single-pilot, light jet that is capable of CAT II ILS approaches. It fits smoothly into the highest volume airports, navigating the most complex arrival and departure procedures using cutting-edge avionics and yet, it can use runways as short as 4,000 feet and do what virtually no other jet can do—operate from unimproved runways of grass, gravel, snow, or dirt.
