Peter Daetwyler, you have a high-tech company with over 400 employees and you’re a pilot yourself with over 4,000 hours in the air. And yet you seem to be incredibly down-to-earth?
I grew up in modest circumstances and I worked hard. But I have to give the credit to my father, otherwise it wouldn’t be fair. He was a clever man!
Your father founded the company 80 years ago. And thanks to your work, the international market has become more and more important. How did you manage that?
My wife and I travelled to Long Island with two suitcases and opened an office there in 1975 at the age of 26. With hindsight, we can both look back on a successful and, above all, a very happy period.
The story of Daetwyler is incredible: Swiss high-tech, a niche player, internationally active – just like Pilatus.
Yes, that’s right. 95 percent of our products are for export. We’re innovative and independent, free of the banks, free to do as we see fit. That’s what makes us so successful.
Here we are in your private museum, standing next to a “Yeti PC-6”!
The museum was created about ten years ago. The Yeti was rather a lucky coincidence. In 2004 we flew our PC-12 almost to the North Pole. Landing in Alaska on a gravel runway, we noticed a piston Porter parked there. My son had never seen anything like it! He took a few photos. A few years later, the exact same PC-6 was bought by the swiss Philipp Sturm. Not airworthy, it was on display at the Museum of Transport in Lucerne. We bought the Yeti from him because my son and I liked it so much!
Together, you invested over 6000 hours!
Well, we’re “mad guys”, I suppose! My team and I, including retired Pilatus employees, didn’t pressure ourselves with an end date for finishing the aircraft. We wanted it to be perfect. People’s hearts really do beat faster when they see the PC-6!
The Yeti is finished and flying, looking like it just came off the production line. Another Porter is hanging in the Museum of Transport – I believe you had a lot to do with that one, too?
That was a bit of a coincidence as well! There was a PC-6 in a container, obviously in really lousy condition. The owner agreed to gift it to the Museum of Transport. We have the know-how, as well as a lot of junk that we could put to good use. We also had the pleasure of doing the overhaul together. Now it stands there. Hopefully forever, because it’s an important piece of Swiss aviation history!
So, when did you catch the aviation bug?
I can’t say exactly, I was still very young. I was flying with my father in a sports plane. I remember loving the red knob, the throttle lever, which I pulled back so far one day, the engine almost stopped! “Quit messing around!”, my father would always say. He was an incredible aviation fan and even designed aircraft himself. I always gave him a hand on Sunday mornings. My whole family has the bug: Marc is an airline pilot and Ralph – who now runs Daetwyler in third Generation – also flies. My fourteen year-old grandchild can almost land on his own.
You’ve owned other Pilatus aircraft too?
Yes the B-4 glider and the PC-2, which was our fun aircraft. We really loved flying it – it always gave us butterflies!
So, hand on heart: which Pilatus aircraft is your personal favourite?
The PC-12! We’ve had one since the nineties. It’s based in the USA. The PC-12 is safe, flexible and incredibly easy to fly. We use it a lot, it does around 400 hours a year. The PC-12 is superbly all-purpose. We use it to fly our sales and service staff to customers all over the USA. There are so many airports, and with the PC-12 you can fly almost anywhere, right to where our customers are. So we can provide the best and fastest service going!
As a customer, do you have a message for Pilatus employees?
As a customer, I have to say that you always win when it comes to service. There’s simply nothing better! You need to take care of that and keep it going moving forward. I applaud what you’re doing in Switzerland. We’re talking about building aircraft here – that’s something incredibly complex! You should get a lot more estimation from Swiss politicians. So many of them just don’t realise what Pilatus represents for Switzerland.
And finally, Pilatus aside: which is your favourite aircraft in general?
The Daetwyler Swiss Trainer of course!
Daetwyler Group & Aviation Museum
The owner-managed Daetwyler Group operates internationally. With its three Divisions, SwissTec (global market leader in the production of precision MDC doctor blades), Rotoflex (printing inks and varnishes for food, non-food and security) and Industries (precision machine-building and special custom projects), it is present worldwide with over ten locations and more than 400 employees. The Daetwyler Group’s MD3-160 is a Swiss two-seater trainer aircraft; over 20 units were produced in the 1980s.
The Aviation Museum in Bleienbach shows the development and history of aviation in the Oberaargau region and beyond.
www.daetwyler.com, www.yetiflyers.ch, www.fliegermuseum-oberaargau.ch
