More than 45 years after he first earned his pilot's licence as a teenager from Oamaru Airport, Keith piloted the Southern DC-3, which had five scenic flights over Oamaru and North Otago yesterday.
Brother Ross was one of the 28 passengers on the first flight out of Oamaru.
The Southern DC-3 Trust "aircraft legend" is on a Heartland tour of the South Island, a fund-raising trip aimed at handing the plane over to the Ashburton Aviation Museum free of debt.
The tour started in Rangiora on Saturday, was in Timaru on Sunday and in Oamaru yesterday.
Today it will be in Dunedin, before flying to Roxburgh, Gore, Invercargill, Five Rivers, Alexandra, Cromwell, Wanaka, Omarama and Twizel.
On November 8, it heads over the Southern Alps for a West Coast tour.
Yesterday, about 150 people paid for North Otago scenic flights.
Keith (65) was the pilot on most of the North Otago flights, in a plane he described as easy to fly.
"You never hear a pilot complaining about a DC-3.
''Everyone loves the plane," he said.
That was backed up by passengers, amazed at how smooth and quiet the 64-year-old aircraft was.
Keith's interest in aircraft started in childhood and he decided to learn to fly when he left school.
He then pursued a career in aircraft engineering, joining the Helicopter Line for 30 years, based mainly in Timaru.
He is qualified to work on and fly fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
It is not the first time he has flown a DC-3 into Oamaru - he was a pilot on the South Pacific Airways tour in 2000 which took three of the aircraft around New Zealand.
The DC-3 on tour was built in June 1944, and served in the Pacific during World War 2.
It went to Australia, fulfilling various roles and passing through several ownerships, before it came to NZ in 1993.
In 2001, Pionair, of Christchurch, acquired it for charter work and the Southern DC-3 Trust started fundraising in 2006 to buy it.
About 14,000 DC-3s were built.
The first flew in 1935.
The trust's DC-3 has had about 19,000 hours' flying time - most have between 50,000 and 60,000 hours.
It is one of only two DC-3s still flying in New Zealand.
The other is based in Auckland.
