For anyone who needs to haul a lot of stuff and fly fast while doing it, the choices are limited. Unless you have a million-dollar -plus turbine budget, legacy piston twins are the top contenders.

And in that group, Pipers Navajo will survive to the short list and thats why it remains a brisk seller on the used market, despite the cratered economy. Aircraft dealer and modifier Mike

Jones, a Navajo specialist, gets that and thus: the Lock and Key Navajo. This mod treads ground thats been broken before, which is essentially to pick a reliable, robust airframe and remanufacture it to new standards, tossing in some state-of-the-art technology where appropriate. Given that the last Navajo was built in 1984, these airplanes are ideal candidates for the sort of upgrades Jones offers on the model.

Remanufacture may be too strong, but Jones basic idea is to put the airframe into the same shape it was when it was new, but with more modern equipment making it basically a better airplane.

Model History