“We did a significant amount of market research and what our customers told us is that they wanted more speed.” —Gretchen Jahn, Mooney CEO

by Paul Bertorelli

In our darkest nightmares of nuclear Armageddon, we can imagine only a few living things surviving among the cinders, maybe a few billion mutant cockroaches, some hardy desert reptiles and a couple of guys hammering Mooneys together in Kerrville, Texas.

Many an airplane company has folded, revived and folded again, but Mooney has been driven to near extinction and brought back from the dead more times than most of the people who work there can even remember. (Al Mooney himself navigated through at least one bankruptcy and resurrection.) …