Pilatus Business Aircraft will offer a Garmin G600 New Perspective glass panel avionics retrofit for its legacy (pre-NG) PC-12 turboprop singles through its authorized and satellite service centers. Garmin is expected to receive supplemental type certificate (STC) approval for the installation late this year. All marketing and sales for the STC is being conducted through the Pilatus sales and service center network. Several centers already have begun accepting customer orders for the system.

“We are very pleased with the overall quality and functionality of the system integration,” said Tom Aniello, Pilatus vice president of marketing. “It will be a nice upgrade option for many of our legacy PC-12 customers. While there has been very strong initial demand, we have elected not to accept orders for the kits from our centers until the STC has been completed. One reason for this is that we will not have the final part numbers and bill of materials until the STC is finalized, so we are not able to stock physical kits for the centers to order.”

Cost of the basic system is $169,000 and initial installation time is estimated at 350 man-hours. “This number will be fine-tuned as the number of installations increases and we get feedback from our centers doing the conversions,” Aniello said. Price and installation time will increase as options are added. “It does require a Garmin navigator in the aircraft, which many of our owners already have in the form of a 530/430 radio stack. I expect a number of owners will choose to upgrade to the Garmin GTN touch-screen radios, too,” he said.

The G600 is expected to provide legacy Pilatus pilots with enhanced situational awareness and workload reduction. The dual-screen G600 pairs both a primary flight display (PFD) and a multi-function (MFD) display in a single 10-inch wide bezel at both pilot stations. Standard items include the Garmin GRS77 attitude, heading and reference system (AHRS), which takes inputs from GPS, magnetometer and the air data computer and fully supports RVSM and interfaces with autopilots (eliminating the need for a gyro ADI), Garmin’s 3-D Synthetic Vision Technology (which provides representational view of terrain and obstacles through the PFD), FliteCharts U.S. approach plates and Garmin SafeTaxi airport charts.

Options include TCAS, TAWS and radar altimeter interface; JeppView chart service including ChartView approach plates and airport surface charts; Garmin GWX 68 or other ARINC 708 weather radar systems; the GDL 69 XM receiver for live weather and Nexrad coverage for the U.S.; and Sirius XM Satellite Radio. The GSR 56, which uses Iridium satellites to provide global weather data, radar imagery, voice/data connectivity and ground-based position tracking, also is an available option. The system also includes a video input option that allows the MFD to double as an enhanced vision or live-cam video monitor.