Page 30 - July22T

Owner’s
Ryan DeLuca
Fitness for Flight
Corner
PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM RAEDER
Ryan DeLuca of Eagle, Idaho, a suburb of Boise, has been f lying since 2005. The tech
entrepreneur and father of four had not grown up interested in flying or wanting to be a pilot but rather began flight training later in life as a hobby.
DeLuca primarily utilizes his 2009 Pilatus PC-12 NG for business and personal f lights with his fam- ily, as well as flights conducted for charitable organizations. He f lies the aircraft single pilot with a footprint predominantly in the western half of the United States. That said, he has stretched the airplane’s nearly 1,600 nautical mile capable legs further outside of that region, having f lown to Florida and other destinations east of the Rockies.
“I decided to make the big step to the PC-12 in 2012,” DeLuca said. He explained his rationale for the
transition, which is similar to many others who grow out of their previ- ous aircraft – in his case, a 2007 Cirrus SR22 Turbo.
“The problem with these four-seater planes is that there are always more people that want to go with you than you can carry. Because of this, I de- cided to take the step up. At first, I was thinking about getting a six-seat Piper Meridian or similar aircraft, but a friend of mine said, ‘If you are going to [eventually] get the PC-12, you might as well go for it. You might as well skip that step.’”
To help ease the transition from un- pressurized fixed-gear operations into the 10,450-pound complex, single-en- gine turboprop, DeLuca completed 50 hours of simulator training at SIMCOM. He recounted some initial standout dif- ferences between his new bird and oth- ers he had previously flown or owned.
“I’m a computer guy, so the avionics weren’t too tough, especially coming from the Cirrus. It’s a different system [Honeywell Primus Apex] than others I’ve flown, but once you know one of the avionics systems, they are all kind of the same. Things are in differ- ent places, but the basic idea of what is possible and what type of data is all the same. I would say the hardest thing about the training was flying a bigger plane. Comparatively, a Cirrus
28 • TWIN & TURBINE / July 2022