__It was a typical November day along the Front Range in Colorado at Rocky Mountain Metro Airport (Jeffco). Against an almost too-perfect sky, the wind was flowing downstream from the west, whistling through the struts and tiedown ropes of the airplanes parked on the wide-open ramp. Looking west toward the Rockies, the sight was a familiar one, with fast moving banks and eddies of clouds streaming over the peaks and billowing down around the ridgelines. It was a pretty sight, but that was where we would be heading before too long, and pilots who’d already been through that day were reporting a wild ride. I felt happy that I’d be flying a Pilatus PC-12. It was a prescient thought.
The Pilatus PC-12 was launched 20 years ago, and it’s gotten to the point that it can be hard to remember a time when it wasn’t part of the scene. At first, the airplane was a hard one for the flying public to get their heads around. In some ways it still is.
