For years, one of my favorite stops at the Sun ‘n Fun show in Florida is to catch up with Mike Jones. Mike’s a sweetheart of a guy, but he’s blunt—and serious—about how he deals with aircraft maintenance at his sprawling, newly renovated shop in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. So serious, in fact, that he actually tries to “run customers out of the maintenance shop” to gauge whether they are as serious about maintenance as they should be. That’s because he’s seen more than one new buyer get stung by complex twins because the aging aircraft fell way behind on maintenance. It’s a problem that’s rampant in the industry.
If his name isn’t familiar, Jones’ Lock & Key refurbishment program might be. For starters, I don’t know anyone in the industry who knows more about every single piece and part in a Piper Navajo than Jones, evident by the Mike Jones Aircraft Lock & Key Navajo refurbishment program, which has expanded to other models including Beech Barons. Early on, Jones bought all of the STC rights to Colemill Enterprises, solid performance mods that have been the industry standard on Navajos, Barons and Twin Cessnas. A seasoned pilot with years of corporate and airline flying under his belt, Jones is the first to admit that his shop isn’t for everyone and he’s humble when admitting that there are plenty of other shops that do good work. But his Lock & Key projects speak for his attention to detail when it comes to refurbishment. Laying on my back in the grass underneath a refurbished Navajo that was on display at the show, I marveled at the work that was done to the aircraft’s landing gear alone and you’d think you’re eyeballing a factory-new machine.
In the Lock and Key mod, Jones builds on this pedigree by essentially reworking the airplane from the bare metal stage out. In addition to a $100,000-plus paint job and a high-end interior upgrade, Lock & Key projects get the latest Garmin avionics packages (his busy avionics shop is in the top 10 of Garmin dealerships when it comes to sales volume), custom trim around the throttle quadrant and subpanels, plus new instrument panels that are as good or better than anything rolling off a new-airplane assembly line.
But refurbs aside, I had a serious discussion with Jones about what he’s seeing in the maintenance world and it echos what lots of other shops are seeing and that is too many owners don’t take maintenance seriously. Jones says we’re coming out of a booming used aircraft market that seems to be stable, but he sees too many buyers who get stung on the front end and would have walked away from aircraft if they only brought them to selective shops that do real prepurchase inspections. Moreover, he sees too many shops (sometimes by no fault of their own) putting bandages on problems instead of actually fixing the source. Landing gear collapses, engine failures and autopilot problems might be avoided if the aircraft was only maintained to higher standards. “We see landing gear bushings, bolts, side braces, drag links and other critical components that haven’t been touched in the 30 or so years the aircraft has been in service,” Jones told me.
We’ll dive deep into this topic in the upcoming series on aircraft maintenance and refurbishment starting with the June 2025 issue of Aviation Consumer.
