The Piper PA-31 Navajo is a family of cabin-class, twin-engine aircraft designed and built by Piper Aircraft for the general aviation market, most using Lycoming

Lycoming Engines

Lycoming Engines is a U.S. aircraft engine company, known primarily for its general aviation engines. For most of its history Lycoming has been part of the AVCO group as AVCO Lycoming. In 1987 AVCO was purchased by Textron to become Textron Lycoming...

 engines. It was also licence-built in a number of Latin America

Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages  – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...

n countries. Targeted at small-scale cargo

Cargo airline

Cargo airlines are airlines dedicated to the transport of cargo. Some cargo airlines are divisions or subsidiaries of larger passenger airlines.-Logistics:...

 and feeder liner operations and the corporate market, the aircraft was a success. It continues to prove a popular choice, but due to greatly decreased demand across the general aviation sector in the 1980s, production of the PA-31 ceased in 1984.
At the request of company founder William T. Piper

William T. Piper

William Thomas Piper Sr. was an American airplane manufacturer, and founder, eponym, and 1st president of Piper Aircraft Corporation 1929-1970. He graduated from Harvard University in 1903, and became known as "the Henry Ford of Aviation". The William T...

, Piper began development of a six- to eight-seat twin engine corporate and commuter transport aircraft in 1962 under the project name Inca.