PRESS RELEASE

“Just fly the plane Jim, just fly the plane,” came the voice on a zero visibility flight where terrific wind shears battered the Piper Archer II. “Don’t look at the instruments. Don’t pick up the radio. Don’t worry about communicating. Fly the airplane.”
    The words, a vital memory imprint of a person no longer in the cockpit, were still very real and those of Ray Rearick who guided Jim Curtiss, Areo Trader’s Flyer of the Month, to a safe emergency landing in Manville, Texas during what he described as his most “frightening flight.”
    “He saved us,” Jim said of his former flight instructor, adding that he kept hearing Rearick’s voice and steady guidance as he contended with extremely adverse flying conditions.
     “We didn’t have the radios and GPs systems we have today,” Jim recalled of the flight. “We were flying from Sarasota Florida to my son’s airbase in San Antonio.”
       A routine flight turned difficult when fog set in. Another pilot offered to lead the way through, but he disappeared into the fog and Jim was left on his own. And then things got much worse over Lafayette, Louisiana.
     “We got caught up in wind shears,” Jim said. “We were up and down and upside down.”
        With fuel running low Jim knew he had to land the plane somewhere. Somewhere turned out to be a farmer’s field in Manville, Texas.
     “I remember getting out and sinking up to my knees in mud,” Jim said. “We didn’t know if we were in Mexico or Canada.”
       Jim walked up to the closest house and was helped by a Good Samaritan who asked Jim, “Didn’t you see all those water moccasins back there?”
     “My wife almost had a heart attack,” Jim laughed at the memory as he looked back on his aviation background eventually leading to his position as director at Vantage Plane Plastics, a diverse manufacturer of interior and exterior plastic parts for almost every aircraft from “Cessna 150s to Learjets.”
     Like many pilots, Jim had a family connection, his uncle ‘Smiling” Jack Curtiss a WW II transport pilot who flew “The Hump” over the Burmese mountains in DC3s to supply troops fighting the Japanese.
     Fuel supply was usually stretched beyond limits in the war environment. “Out of 163 missions he flew,” Jim said, “he probably didn’t make it back to the airport 140 times” and instead ran out of fuel and had to land wherever possible. Uncle Jack’s stories after the war about aviation inspired Jim to try his own flying, but he only flew once with his uncle.
    Jim said he was only 16 in 1960 when he invited his uncle to fly along.
    “I noticed when we were flying he was sweating and it was a nice cool day,” Jim said.
    After landing he asked, “Are you OK Jack?” and his uncle looked back at him and said, “Too many memories, Jim, too many memories.”
     Fortunately, most of Jim’s memories are of a positive nature, and that should come as no surprise considering he was an “Imagineer” who facilitated a famous Walt Disney program still in operation.  In this capacity Jim traveled to businesses to present a special program to engineers and other corporate leaders. The course was called “Imagineer It” and “allowed companies to start thinking out of the box.”
     “I had a blast,” Jim said of his Disney days but soon it was time to move. Jim began to facilitate for many businesses as an independent consultant. One of his clients happened to be a company called Plane Plastics.
     After doing some consulting work for Plane Plastics, Jim presented a bill for services. He was told he wasn’t going be paid, and this didn’t sit too well, but things looked a lot better when he was offered a job with the company that eventually resulted in his current position.
    “The only company to reverse engineer any OEM part,” Jim said of Vantage Plane Plastics, a business that can do it all when it comes to aviation plastic parts, many no longer made by the original manufacturer. The company is not only licensed to manufacture these parts but also gets them PMA’d for aircraft use.
    “We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,800 tools right now,” Jim said of the extensive equipment needed to fabricate so many different plastic parts. Jim explained that tool means mold, and two of them are used to form the parts. The process, known as “thermal forming” involves heating a plastic sheet, placing it between two molds, and then applying a vacuum to pull the heated plastic into the mold. Afterwards, the plastic is cooled and then cut from the mold.
     With reverse engineering, a customer sends a part they want reproduced to Vantage Plane Plastic and then the company uses it to create an exact duplicate. Jim said any part that does not meet a customer’s complete satisfaction can be returned for replacement.  In fact, Vantage Plane Plastics offers a 100 percent guarantee on any part they make with the only condition being that the part isn’t altered, drilled or painted prior to return.
       The job can be as simple as a single piece down to the entire interior of an aircraft. Jim used as an example supplying the parts to completely redo the interior of Cessna 205s. “It took us 14 days to reverse engineer and build the tools,” he said. The tools themselves vary from “the size of a small camera to one as big as the top of your desk” depending on the job at hand.
     “In order to stay viable in the market,” Jim said, “when technology changes you have to change with it,” and Vantage Plane Plastics is doing just that. Jim reported a new product under development that involves putting a thin foam layer over plastic interior parts and then covering the foam in leather or ultra leather to create luxurious cabins that are as functional as they are stylish. Vantage Plane Plastics also works now with modern carbon fibers, the cutting edge of today’s technology.
     Originally, Vantage Plane Plastics was a division of Kinzie Industries and established in 1951. In 1983 Kinzie built its first fixed wing interior replacement components and soon branched out to many makes of aircraft after finding they could produce parts of superior quality at far less than OEM replacement prices. The company then became a separate entity and was incorporated as Plane Plastics Ltd., and in 2000 became a part of Vantage Industries.
    Located on the south end of Alva Regional Airport in Alva, Oklahoma, Vantage Plane Plastics lists its prime mission “to continually improve and expand our product line while maintaining extensive part inventories in order to deliver most parts within days of order placement.”
     People wanting more information can call the customer service department toll free at 866-307-5263. Vantage Plane Plastics also has an extensive web site and on-line catalog at www.planeplastics.com.
    Although providing replacement parts is a major part of Vantage Plane Plastic’s business, the company also is involved in contract work for major manufacturers. For one specific, Vantage Plane Plastics provides the plastic pieces for Enstrom helicopters.
     As one might imagine, Jim is a strong advocate for general aviation.
     “It’s killing general aviation a little bit at a time,” Jim said of high fuel costs, and economic circumstance he suspects may be more created than natural. This, of course, also directly impacts the plastic manufacturing business as plastic is a petroleum product. To counter the rise in supply costs, Jim said Vantage Plane Plastics is working diligently to become more efficient in order to keep costs down in spite of rising material costs.
    “Most of us who are flying are scrimping to fly,” Jim explained. “ We may not play golf; we may not have boating hobbies, just so we can keep our planes in the air.”
     Jim also takes issue with the notion that aviation is a rich man’s pursuit.
     “They call it a rich man’s sport,” Jim said, “but I’ve got news for them. I’ve got less money in my airplane than most people have in their cars, and I’d say that half the pilots are the same way.”
     “I think the government needs to support aviation instead of taxing it,” Jim said of another area of concern, government plans to increase aviation taxes through more user fees.
     “It (aviation) is the one form of freedom-the time machine-that lets us get across the country without building more roads,” Jim noted in explaining how aviation actually saves the government money as opposed to drawing on its resources.
     As for advocates in his own life, Jim said he will always remember Ray Rearick who has since passed away. There’s a plaque in Ray’s memory at the Owasso Airport in Michigan and Jim said he’s been back to see it a few times.
    “I just go back because I figure I owe him,” Jim said.