Pilatus PC-12 PRO Certified by FAA and EASA to Land Itself in Emergencies

Pilatus announced that the PC-12 PRO, the latest version of its widely used single-engine turboprop, has received certification from both the FAA and the European Union Aviation Safety Agency for its Safety Autoland emergency system — Pilatus's version of Garmin's Emergency Autoland, integrated into the Garmin G3000 PRIME flight deck. It is the first PC-12 family aircraft to carry the capability.

The system activates in two ways: any occupant can press a dedicated button, or the aircraft detects that the pilot is no longer flying. From there it takes full control — it evaluates weather, fuel, aircraft status, runway length, wind, and terrain to select a suitable airport, routes there, operates the flaps, landing gear, exterior lights, and de-icing equipment, transmits automated radio messages to air traffic control and other aircraft about the emergency, alerts emergency services, and after touchdown brakes to a stop and shuts down the engine.

The certification was earned, not papered over: Pilatus says the system was exercised during the final PC-12 PRO certification campaign with demonstrations covering the entire sequence from activation through autonomous flight, landing, and engine shutdown. Garmin's Autoland has previously been certified on the Piper M600/SLS and Daher TBM 940, so this is a proven design moving onto one of the world's most common turboprops — more than 2,000 PC-12s have been delivered.

For people who work in airport systems, this is worth watching closely. An autoland aircraft effectively becomes an autonomous client of the airport: it picks a destination based on airport data, expects the published runway dimensions and surface conditions to be accurate, lands unannounced except for automated radio calls, and hands off to responders on the ground. As these systems spread from business aircraft toward larger fleets, the quality and timeliness of airport data feeds — the same data that drives FIDS and NOTAM pipelines — becomes safety-critical infrastructure rather than passenger convenience.

Why it matters: pilot incapacitation is rare but almost always fatal in a single-pilot aircraft, and this is the first time a certified 'press the button and the plane lands itself' capability has shipped on an aircraft of this class on both sides of the Atlantic. It is a demonstrated, certified result — not a concept — and it signals where the regulatory conversation about increasingly autonomous aircraft in shared airspace is heading next.