Air Plains Services celebrates 40 years

Founder Mike Kelley said he started the company out of a passion to make airplanes fly better, faster, more agile, and cheaper to operate.

Air Plains offers engine and propeller upgrades for the Cessna 172, 180, 182, and 182RG. The company owns 20 supplemental type certificates, including five for engine upgrades. Air Plains performs installations at its facility but also ships ready-to-install kits around the world. Kits have been shipped to Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Europe, South Africa, and South America.

AOPA’s Sweepstakes 172 sports an Air Plains Extreme Performance STC for its 180-horsepower Lycoming O-360 engine. The kit was installed at Yingling Aviation in Kansas, and Air Plains technicians installed the engine baffles.

Air Plains is an FAA-certified repair station and a certified Cessna Service Center. Its machine shop can produce more than 1,000 parts manufacture approval part numbers for a variety of aircraft, the company said. Air Plains also performs scheduled maintenance and inspections, custom airframe and interior work, avionics upgrades, and airframe repair.

“We started as a maintenance shop 40 years ago and that remains a core capability for Air Plains,” Kelley said. “The culture we established at the very beginning for high-quality work and a real desire for constant improvement of aircraft and aircraft products is what makes me happiest as I look forward to the next 40 years.”

You can see the Sweepstakes 172 at the Sun ‘n Fun International Fly-In and Expo in Lakeland, Florida, April 4 through 9, and other locations to be announced.