I suggest you don’t move the plane but rather move the camera. I’ve seen it done like that many a time with some pretty great results. Mad TV had a skit where there were a bunch of people in a car driving and the camara would sway back and forth facing the front of the car. When the car pulled over they would just rotate the camara around the car and come to a stop looking through the side door. It looked really damn good. I’m pretty sure that’s what they did for StarWars as well.
I used the I-Pod commercial tutorial and animated the light position. It looked really friggan cool and I was able to make the strokes in 3d space and spin the camera around it.