The Principle of Moments

On 12 December Pilatus Aircraft, the storied Swiss manufacturer of eminently capable niche airplanes, delivered the very last specimen of its iconic PC-6 Porter—a single-engine STOL utility aircraft the firm has produced in both piston and turboprop iterations since 1959.

The 604th and final PC-6, Serial Number 1019, registered as FB-FBE, was handed over to Smart Aviation of Jakarta, Indonesia—an unscheduled commercial air-carrier that owns and operates not only 11 Cessna 208 and 208B Caravans, two Pilatus PC-6 Porters, and one Airbus H130-T2 helicopter, but a private airport in Singkawang West Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.

On 15 December 2022, FB-FBE went down in the Aegean Sea, approximately four-nautical-miles east of Crete’s capital city of Heraklion. The two pilots—a 32-year-old South African and a 62-year-old Indonesian were recovered from the sea. Only the former survived.

According to witnesses, the PC-6 crew, immediately after departing Heraklion International Airport’s (HER) Runway 09, reported a mechanical irregularity and declared an emergency. The flying pilot subsequently attempted a northerly climbing turn to return to the airport. The aircraft reportedly reached an altitude of approximately 1,400-feet before entering a deep aerodynamic stall and plunging into the sea.

Following its 12 December delivery, FB-FBE departed Switzerland’s Buochs Airport (BXO), Indonesia-bound by way of Maribor, Slovenia; Podgorica, Montenegro; Heraklion, Crete; Egypt, and points beyond. That the last PC-6—after a 63-year production run—will never arrive at its planned destination is the bitterest of ironies. The type was known for its phenomenal short takeoff and landing capabilities and general versatility. Among its numerous achievements, the Pilatus PC-6 Porter holds the world record for the highest pressure altitude landing of a fixed-wing aircraft.

In 1960, the PC-6 prototype—dubbed Yeti—took part in a Swiss expedition to summit Dhaulagiri, a 26,795-foot Himalayan wonder and the world’s seventh highest, and third deadliest mountain. On 05 May, under the steel-nerved airmanship and possible abject insanity of pilots Ernst Saxer and Emile Wick, Yeti landed on a mountain plateau a staggering 18,700-feet above mean sea-level. Regrettably, the ensuing takeoff attempt saw Yeti severely damaged. Too high to retrieve, Yeti was abandoned upon the great mountain, where its wreckage remains to this day.

That machines inspire pathos in the human heart is at once inexplicable and undeniable. The Titanic, the Arizona, the Saturn V, the Starship Enterprise, the General Lee—each elicits a unique and nostalgic connection to a cultural narrative by which Western civilization is bound. Airplanes—perhaps to an even greater degree than ships, automobiles, and spacecraft real or imagined—compel the human spirit to wonderment. The zeitgeists of epochs alternately romantic, bloody, elegant, and pioneering are borne aboard  the Spirit of St. Louis, the Spitfire, the Constellation, and Concorde.

In the last two-years, the Learjet, the 747, and the PC-6 have made their exits from a world forever changed by their passages through it. The last Porter is at the bottom of the Aegean Sea; the first 747 languishes in near perpetual rainfall at Seattle’s Museum of Flight; on such moribund truisms no heart should dwell. Rather, let us commend these machines to memory’s high altar, where they shall exist forever at the confluence of past and possibility.

FMI: www.pilatus-aircraft.com