Thanks! Happy to learn then :)
https://airfactsjournal.com/2022/03/whats-wrong-with-pilatus-pc-12-pilots/
The Honeywell system had a very clear ‘cavalry charge’ (nearly Rossini like) when the autopilot kicked off, but there may be malfunctions which mask the disconnect.
This article is quite fair, and it politely doesn’t mention that the PC12 safety record is better than the King Air.
Thanks for the link to an excellent article @RobertL18C.
Very interesting views on autopilot use, and the whole PC-12 concept, the notable sentence being an airplane this sophisticated does demand proficiency.
Another analysis data point:
Early analysis:
Lot’s of use of the conditional and listing of “possible” causes rather than jumping to conclusions about what actually did happen. Also, interesting information about the stall characteristics of the PC12.
chflyer wrote:
Another analysis data point:
Early analysis!
The link doesn’t work.
URL fixed. On EuroGA, Youtube and Vimeo URLs are just dropped in directly. No need to make them into clickable links. The software here identifies the URLs and presents the embedded player. Make sure there is a blank line after YT URLs.
I enjoyed this video that talks about the PC-12 crash. Spoiler: It was not ice.
I thought the discussion of aerodynamics and icing was excellent. It is reasonable to say it is too early to tell if icing was not a factor? The PC12 exhaust is known to create some asymmetry on ice accumulation, and while it has a sophisticated boot inflation sequence (at least in the NG type, not sure about this earlier model), it is not unreasonable to also consider an Auto Pilot disconnect due to icing (with full right rudder trim in climb), followed by a roll, and then the pilot suffering a startle and not applying a correct recovery action.
thanks for the link Mickey, very interesting report.
Did not know that Austin Meyer was a scientist… but there are other things I didn’t know, or had long forgotten 
RobertL18C wrote:
it is not unreasonable to also consider an Auto Pilot disconnect due to icing (with full right rudder trim in climb), followed by a roll, and then the pilot suffering a startle and not applying a correct recovery action.
I think the point he is making is the PC12 wing is only able to generate enough G force for this break up sequence in a non iced up state. If it was iced up it would not be possible to beak at that point. It would probably have broken up also but later at even higher speed.
But there are a few unknowns. For example he assumes a 14G load for the break up. But in real life this is probably rather a force on the wing root which can result in different G loads at different weights. Also ultimate load until failure might not be consistent across all airframes. You only get a warranty from the manufacturer for certain loads but who knows if some variation in materials etc. results in different points of ultimate failure. If you buy 10 engines they will not all break at the same number of hours either.
But those are minor details and his conclusions are probably spot on.
