The history of the Tdata, The AD Toolbox, and Avantext is a short history lesson in the modernization of compliance technologies over the last 30 years. What began in the early 1990s with entrepreneurs experimenting in small apartments and motel rooms grew into the backbone of aviation maintenance compliance for thousands of A&Ps, IAs, and operators worldwide.
Along the way, pioneers like Jim Thomas and Reuben Zook pushed through technical hurdles and reinvented products with a simple goal: making aviation compliance simpler, safer, and easier to accomplish. We are proud to continue their legacy.
The roots of Tdata and the AD Toolbox trace back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when aviation maintenance and compliance data were mostly handled on paper and microfiche. In October of 1991, Jim Thomas flew an airplane to Loudon County airport and met a guy named Del Sayers who pulled out a microfiche book. Jim said:
“I couldn’t believe how it expensive it was! Since my family business was in that, I started looking into it. There was another company that was selling reprints of the FAA microfiche and since I knew how to duplicate the duplicates, I started doing that. At first I had twenty customers, then fifty, then over two-hundred. At some point, because the quality was really bad on the government stuff, I decided to put together my own. I went ahead and got a camera, and started doing it the right way.”
Right around this time, Reuben Zook left his job as a Manager at a parts shop to create multiple versions of what would ultimately become Avantext, a company digitizing technical publications and compliance data for GA. The first versions of Avantext went beyond microfiche, starting directly with software:
“It was a DOS product. We even had a floppy disc version that didn’t include the AD text; just a list of AD’s and how to find them. Then we went on CD for awhile. The product was just done in steps. Of course at the same time, Tdata was working through their own product iterations as well.”
The process was very manual and time consuming. For example, at Avantext, it would take weeks to scan airworthiness directives before sending them out to customers.
“ADs were mailed out in paper form, coming out LONG after the effective date. We would scan them and OCR them, before putting them on 9-track tape and send these off to Canada where we had CDs made before they’d be sent back.”
Both Jim and Reuben rode the wave of technology adoption in the 90s to grow their customer base. Tdata focused on better indexed AD libraries, adding service bulletins, and developing the SDR master database. At the same time, Reuben focused on upgrading to CD/DVD deliveries while digitizing paper libraries (famously Piper’s, done out of a motel room with copiers). Jim said,
“They all wanted the Service Bulletins, so we figured out how to get ‘em and made an add-on for that. We spent a lot of time indexing the ADs which was ultimately leveraged into our first computer program (on DOS) on little floppies…Everybody was loving it. It wasn’t until we came out with either version 4 or 5 on CD (which could hold everything) that it really started selling.”
Reuben said:
“We used to get the Service Documents at the Government itself – they used to let us in a very disorganized room where we ended up re-organizing the entire room to make it easier to find the new ones every time we went back.”
Avantext also had a team in St. Lucia of nearly 25 people whose sole purpose was to digitize tech pubs and Type Certificate Data Sheets (TCDS). “Just think of the world before pdf,” Reuben said. “It was wild, but we were determined to digitize things.”
In the early 2000’s, Reuben and Avantext’s investors came to a disagreement on the future of the business. At that time, both Reuben and Jim had had an inkling to join forces and consolidate, but the timing just didn’t work out.
Reuben ultimately left Avantext and formed Zook Aviation and launched the first iteration of The AD Toolbox, a leaner competitor focused on digital compliance tools. The first version was simple and pragmatic as a simple list of PDFs before evolving into SQL databases and cloud tools. As such, AD Toolbox became known for its simplicity, accessibility, and responsive support.
Meanwhile, Jim kept growing Tdata, launching additional products like Mtrax, Itrax, FleetManager, and “Desktop Delivery” of their suite of tools. In 2013, Tdata purchased Avantext, adding technical publications (“tech pubs”) to the growing mix of compliance tools.
“It was good,” Jim said. “We got the indexing for large aircraft, the service bulletins, and everything that went into it.”
By the mid-2010s, both companies were navigating the shift from disc to cloud. At the AD Toolbox, Dani was hired to build back-end infrastructure that allowed them to eliminate dozens of excel spreadsheets in favor of single-table updates. “People had been asking for the online version,” Reuben said, “I think there were 100 holdouts at the end.”
“It was exciting, something that needed to be done,” Dani said. “We ultimately gained more customers from being online and being more accessible.”
At Tdata, Jim continued to push forward through a lengthy and costly migration effort to modernize the product. “We started in India, then Miami with a back-end in Pakistan, and then I brought it back to Columbus, where we finally got it done in 2018.”
Launching in 2019 with a new web version, now both companies were fully online, with Tdata continuing to produce bi-weekly DVDs and Desktop Delivery options for legacy customers.
Despite crossing paths for decades, a combination of Tdata and the AD Toolbox had always eluded both founders over the years. It wasn’t until much later (present day) where the two companies were finally able to come together, helping A&Ps, IAs, and operators manage maintenance and compliance with easy-to-use tools and world-class support.
“We tried to make it happen a few times, twenty years ago,” said Reuben. “It’s an opportunity whose time has finally arrived.”
If you are interested in joining us on our mission to improve and simplify aviation maintenance compliance, sign up for our 10-day free trial here or call us at (540) 217-4471 and come help us continue writing our story.
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