I’m a newbie here … having used FlightAware for quite a while, but never posting.
I live in north Fort Worth, TX and spotted an unusual aircraft flying over on Tuesday afternoon. At ~5:15 PM on Tuesday, July 29th, I spotted what appeared to be a canard-winged aircraft flying overhead between 5k and 10k feet, climbing on a westward track. I’m a pretty adept aircraft spotter, but have been completely baffled by this one.
It looked to be an MD-80 -type aircraft, yet with large canard wings. It went into the clouds as it overflew me, so I didn’t get much of a look. I’ve searched the web for photos, as well as FA for the ground track and N-number. No luck!
Nope … wasn’t the Avanti. I’m fairly familiar with it as we have one based out of KAFW (the Avanti is a neat looking and sounding aircraft). I do see it flying over from time to time.
This one was definitely a jet and similar in size to an MD-80. The canards almost reminded me of the Scaled Composites “Proteus” aircraft.
Quite possibly the one … to think I could possibly confuse an MD-80 and 737. I saw it from a distance and then saw it in and out of the clouds … so very likely.
Sure seemed like the canards were much longer, though the aspect ratio seems correct.
Cribbed from the Voodoo1 topic also running at present, another mutant aircraft with mini-canards is the following (but possibly in the wrong part of the country to you).
A longer aspect more akin to a MD80 from below:
B727 N289MT
