Shropshire dentist gets teeth into transatlantic challenge
A Shropshire business entrepreneur has taken a novel approach to ensure his dental supplies company continues to hit the heights – one that has seen him recently fly an aeroplane across the Atlantic Ocean.
Since launching Shrewsbury-based dental implant supplier Implantium back in 2008, Founder and Director Jason Buglass has increasingly had to travel not just the length and breadth of the UK, but also to France, Germany, Italy and beyond, to meet with customers, suppliers, and fellow dental professionals.
A keen private pilot since 1998 with more than 1,000 hours flying experience behind him, Jason has now taken the plunge and invested in Implantium’s own light aircraft to enable him to combine this personal passion for flying, with the more practical benefit it brings of giving him the opportunity to conduct business ‘on the move’.
“As travelling to Europe involves a great deal of flying over water, I decided that a twin engine aircraft would be absolutely essential. I really liked the look of the Diamond DA42 Twin Star model, and after much research, managed to find what seemed to be the perfect purchase, low miles on the clock, excellent condition, and a very keen price. There was just one slight issue, it was based in the United States and I would have to fly it back myself!”
Jason enlisted the assistance of experienced ferry pilot David Plange to join him on the four-day transatlantic flight, which began in Statesville, North Carolina, and took in refuelling stops at Bangor, Maine, Goose Bay in Canada, the tiny village of Narsarsuaq in Greenland, Keflavik in Icleand, and Wick in Scotland. The crossing took in some spectacular scenery, including icebergs, fjords and overwater crossings, but wasn’t entirely without incident.
“On our crossing to Iceland, we ran into a large front from a low pressure system, temperatures dropped to -26oc, and we rapidly started picking up ice, despite the best efforts of the aircraft’s anti-icing system. Normally under these conditions, the best thing to do would be to divert to the nearest airport, but unfortunately that’s not an option when you are 100 miles off land – David and I were certainly relieved to reach Keflavik in one piece,” Jason explained.
“But even that doesn’t quite reach the heights of worry my wife Emma felt at one point during our voyage. David had a GPS based tracking system fitted, so people at home could watch our progress in real time on a website. Apparently, at one point the website crashed and we appeared to have stopped, leading to what can only be described as a bit of a panic at home and frantic calls to air traffic control, only to be told we were just landing in Wick, blindly oblivious to all the fuss!”
After finally hitting terra firma again, Jason’s Diamond Twin Star – which has a 13.4m wingspan, a range of more than 1,000 miles, a top speed of 220mph, and goes by the appropriate moniker M-OUTH – is now carrying out the slightly less adventurous duty of helping him go about his day to day business at Implantium.
Implantium is a leading UK-based supplier of high-quality, cost-effective dental implants. Run for dentists, by dentists, Implantium runs its own research programme and actively seeks innovative ideas that could be developed into new products, while it is also home to the Implantium Network, a match-making service which helps place patients who are interested in having an implant placed with skilled dentists in their local area.
