Pilatus Aircraft

Pilatus Aircraft is a Swiss aerospace manufacturer with its headquarters and production plant at Stans in the canton of Nidwalden. It was founded as Pilatus Flugzeugwerke AG in December 1939, in the middle of the Second World War, at a site chosen for its distance from the Swiss border and its position against a ridge of Mount Pilatus. For its first decades it maintained and repaired aircraft for the Swiss Air Force and built trainers, then moved into short take-off and landing utility aircraft with the PC-6 Porter, military trainers such as the PC-7, PC-9 and PC-21, and the PC-12 single-engine turboprop that became its best selling type. Its twin-engine PC-24 jet was developed in the 2010s. The original owners, Oerlikon-Bührle and later Unaxis, sold the firm to a consortium of Swiss investors in December 2000. In August 2025 it employed around 3,000 people, and in 2019 it reported revenues of 1.2 billion Swiss francs from 134 aircraft deliveries.