The single-engine PC-12 against the twin-turboprop King Air 360, the central choice in the owner-flown and light-corporate turboprop market.
Cruise and range sit close enough here that neither should settle it, which surprises buyers who arrive expecting the twin to be the faster aeroplane. What the second turbine actually buys is redundancy, a stand-up cabin and payload, and what it costs is most of the difference in both purchase and annual budget. Flight departments and charter operators usually need the King Air 360 because a passenger or an insurer expects two engines over water or terrain at night. An owner-pilot flying themselves, out of shorter fields, is generally buying more aeroplane than the mission needs when they step up from the PC-12.
The table below uses the same versioned PlaneFit dataset as the Finder. Prices and operating costs are planning estimates, not quotations.
Choose the PC-12 NGX when single-engine efficiency, cargo flexibility and access to shorter or less-developed fields define the work. It is often the more coherent owner-flown platform when policy and insurance permit a single turbine and the cabin meets the manifest.
Choose the King Air 360 when twin-engine redundancy, a larger stand-up cabin, corporate passenger expectations or operating policy justify the additional engine, training and maintenance commitment. The second turbine has to satisfy a real requirement because its cost recurs whether or not the mission needs it.
Neither belongs in an operation without turbine training, recurrent proficiency, qualified maintenance and a realistic downtime plan. If those resources are not available at the home base, managed operation or charter is a more credible solution than stretching an owner-flown plan.
The comparison does not model crew policy, commercial approvals, programme coverage, field surface or engine-out performance. Use approved manuals, insurer requirements and a route-specific operational analysis before selecting either aircraft.
| Decision factor | Pilatus PC-12 NGXView aircraft profile | Beechcraft King Air 360View aircraft profile |
|---|---|---|
| Typical market year | 2023 | 2023 |
| Estimated purchase | €5.26m | €8.08m |
| Annual cash cost at 80 h | €260k | €462k |
| Five-year cash outlay | €6.57m | €10.39m |
| Cruise speed | 290 kt | 312 kt |
| Advertised range | 1803 nm | 1806 nm |
| Seats | 10 | 11 |
| Realistic payload | 975 kg | 1152 kg |
| Runway need | 758 m | 1006 m |
| Landing gear | Retractable tricycle | Retractable tricycle |
| Ratings and endorsements | Type rating, Complex airplane endorsement, High-altitude training | Multi-engine rating, Type rating, Complex airplane endorsement, High-altitude training |
| Data confidence | Normalized for direct comparison | Normalized for direct comparison |
| Main trade-off | Exceptional cabin, payload and runway versatility, but acquisition and professional-grade support costs are substantial. | Large cabin, excellent payload and broad airport access, but fixed costs and two large PT6 reserves are enterprise-level. |
A factual first pass. Mission, condition and configuration can outweigh a brochure advantage.
They do not cross. The Pilatus PC-12 NGX is the cheaper of the two at every utilisation from zero to 300 hours a year, on purchase and running cost together, so there is no break-even point to find. That is worth knowing plainly: on cost alone this is not a trade-off, and the case for the other aircraft has to be made on mission, cabin, speed or access rather than on eventual savings.
| Five-year cash, including purchase | Pilatus PC-12 NGX | Beechcraft King Air 360 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 h / year | $6.82m (€6.32m) | $10.71m (€9.91m) | $3.89m (€3.6m) to Pilatus PC-12 NGX |
| 100 h / year | $7.23m (€6.69m) | $11.48m (€10.63m) | $4.26m (€3.94m) to Pilatus PC-12 NGX |
| 200 h / year | $7.9m (€7.32m) | $12.78m (€11.83m) | $4.88m (€4.52m) to Pilatus PC-12 NGX |
The gap widens as utilisation rises, which is the part a headline price comparison hides. Every figure uses the same planning model as the rest of the site: indicative market prices, a fixed annual base and a direct hourly cost, before financing, depreciation and tax.
Advertised range is a still-air, best-case number. With 4 people aboard and realistic reserves, plan on about 1,208 nm from the Pilatus PC-12 NGX against 1,210 nm from the Beechcraft King Air 360. On a return trip without refuelling, that is the radius that decides which destinations are on the list at all.
Against the 28,815 airports in the PlaneFit database that publish a runway length, the Pilatus PC-12 NGX has enough runway at 20,678 of them and the Beechcraft King Air 360 at 13,414, comparing each aircraft’s take-off requirement of 2,487 ft and 3,301 ft against the longest runway on the field.
This is a planning comparison, not a statement that any particular operation is legal or advisable. It ignores surface, slope, elevation, temperature, obstacles and how heavily the aircraft is loaded, all of which extend the requirement. It also compares take-off distance only: landing distance is frequently the binding constraint and PlaneFit does not hold approved landing distances, so a field in these counts is not necessarily a field you can get back out of, or into.
The Beechcraft King Air 360 requires a multi-engine rating that the Pilatus PC-12 NGX does not. That is training time and instructor cost before the first trip, and insurers normally attach minimum-hours conditions to the same requirement, which is where it shows up again in the running cost. US requirements under 14 CFR 61.31, stated for orientation rather than as advice.