Your chance to experience business aviation

Some AOPA members accuse us of having all the fun when it comes to sampling a variety of airplanes. Well, here’s your chance to get in on the action. AOPA is working with Pilatus Aircraft to give a pilot a chance to fly a PC-12 NG on missions that showcase the capabilities of business aircraft.

Bring along up to three friends, clients, or colleagues. We’ll document the experience in words, photos, and video and share it with AOPA members in AOPA Pilot and AOPA ePilot, on AOPA.org, and through AOPA Live This Week.

The PC-12 is an amazingly versatile airplane, equally at home in town or country. Take it backcountry off dirt strips or settle onto the runway at bustling McCarran International next to the glitzy Las Vegas strip. Stuff a bunch of equipment to show prospects in through the commodious cargo door in the back or usher clients into first-class leather seats for a comfortable, pressurized trip back to your factory to seal the deal. No matter the runway surface, the PC-12 climbs away carrying almost two tons of fuel and stuff, headed for the flight levels where it will cruise at more than 270 knots. With full fuel, the turboprop can range some 1,500 nautical miles while carrying 1,000 pounds of people and gear.

The AOPA Pilot BizAv and You contest powered by Pilatus begins March 1 and ends June 30. The contest is open to people who own or work for a company that would benefit from the use of a business aircraft such as the PC-12 NG. To enter, send a 300-word or fewer description of how your company would take advantage of a turbine business aircraft if you had access to it. The entries will be judged by the editorial staff at AOPA and, as they like to say in those big contests, the judges’ decisions are final. Special consideration will be given to those who outline missions that take advantage of the PC-12 NG’s unique capabilities of operating off of a variety of runway surfaces and into and out of remote areas with unusual gear that is easily accommodated by the PC-12’s cargo door.

Pilatus Aircraft will supply a PC-12 NG for up to eight hours of mission flying on up to four consecutive days—all within the contiguous 48 U.S. states. Two Pilatus corporate pilots will be on the trip. However, if you’re a pilot and the Pilatus pilots approve, you will get a chance to fly some of the legs. You may bring along up to three others and AOPA will bring along a writer and a photographer/videographer. The PC-12 NG seats up to 11. We will do our best to minimize our payload in order to help you accomplish your mission.

The winner will be responsible for getting to the starting point of the mission and returning to his or her home base afterward, although the mission can be a round robin trip. AOPA will provide food and accommodations for the winners during the trip.

Here’s more of that legalese: If all of the eight flight hours are used, the prize has a taxable value of about $13,000. We’ll throw in $4,000 in cash to help cover the taxes, raising the taxable value to $17,000. But the winner is responsible for paying any applicable taxes, whatever they may be.

Game?

See the official rules here.

Learn more about the PC-12 NG and its capabilities here. 

And email those 300-word descriptions of how you’d use such an airplane in a Word document to [email protected] before 5 p.m. EDT June 30, 2015.

We plan to notify the winner by July 10. The trip must be completed by Sept. 18 at a mutually agreed upon time and place with AOPA and Pilatus.

See you on the ramp.