I live in St Louis about 12 miles from Lambert International, and a couple days ago saw an unusual plane. I’m not an aviation maven, so any detail of my description could easily be an error. The craft was flying low — not alarmingly so, but the noise made me look up. It wasn’t directly overhead, but my view was mostly of the bottom, almost nothing of the sides.
– The Big Thing: It had a pair of airfoils on the nose. At first I thought it could be a strange propeller, but no.
– Without the nose wings I would have thought it was a small two-engine commercial jet.
– I believe the wings were swept back — like a small commercial jet. Nothing about the wing shape struck me as odd.
– The only pictures I’d seen of planes with extra wings were of small experimental aircrafts, so I tried to guess the plane’s size. I have no training, but it looked like it might seat 30-70 passengers. That could be way, way off.
—The other odd thing: As the plane circled out of my view the back of the fuselage – where it tapered to meet the tail – was very narrow (like a swordfish or a P-38 Mustang?). It almost seemed to vanish for an instant.
This could have happened September 23, mid-to-late afternoon, but could have been the 22nd. Presumably the color was white, possibly silver. That’s probably all the info I have.
The only photos of large planes with front airfoils I’ve found are of the Piaggio P-180. I can’t rule out that the plane had rear-facing propellers, and could be convinced that the wings were not swept back, but do have trouble believing the Piaggio could look like an ordinary commercial plane from below.