Pilatus (Day 4).

Assuming that ATL wasn’t going to get another crazy March snow storm .. our day to leave Colorado finally came. But not before our tour of the Pilatus (airplanes) compound.

Here’s the background… my friend, Sean, is a pilot for Peachtree-DeKalb airport… more specifically he works for EPPS Aviation which sells Pilatus planes. So occasionally Sean will head out to Colorado to pick up a plane for an EPPS customer. It just so happened to work out that Sean was in Colorado picking up a plane the same time we were skiing (so it was great blessing from God to have Sean out there at the same time).

Sunday afternoon, Sean mentioned that he’d never had a tour of the Pilatus factory. He made a phone call (like he does so often – he loves the phone – dude called everyone he knew to tell them he skied Vail – love you Sean!) and set up a time for us to have a tour. Not going to lie, I wasn’t exactly sure about this whole tour thing – I thought it would be a little boring and all I could think about was going to the University of Colorado bookstore to get a hoodie – hehe. Well at the end of the tour I was thoroughly impressed and had asked a million and one questions – which isn’t like me. The factory is awesome. The planes come there pretty much empty – only the bare essentials to get the plane there (they come all the way from Switzerland – which is where the main plant is). In the Colorado plant, they have three different parts to the factory – paint, avionics and upholstery. I was amazed at the fact that they do everything with their hands.. no machines, no assembly lines, nothing. We walked through a couple of different hangers.. seeing about 8 different planes – all in different stages – some with finished upholstery with no paint or avionics, some painted with partial upholstery and no avionics, you get the picture.

This Pilatus plant will have about 65 planes come through their doors this year. All of which they will pimp out especially for their customers. Crazy!

I left the Pilatus plant thinking someone needs to do a reality show on this company – PIMP MY PLANE!

After we finished our tour reality set in… we grabbed a quick bite to eat on Pearl Street (which brought back so many memories from traveling to Colorado as teenager – it was always part of summer vaca). Then Sean dropped us off to the airport to head back to ATL.

Colorado was an amazing time. I definitely needed time away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. Time with great friends is priceless and being in another state puts a few more exclamation points to the priceless. Thanks Sean, Yarome, Zach, DJ, Hailey and Jessica for making the trip unbelievable – I am extremely blessed through our friendships. Um – but let’s not go skiing next year

Enjoy the amazing pictures from the Pilatus plant.. (who wants to buy me one of these?)

Ashton Martin with wings

flight deck

Royal Canadian Mounted Police is a Pilatus client

I won't ever be able to afford to sit in this chair again