{"id":313835,"date":"2026-05-29T11:29:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/313835\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T11:29:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T11:29:07","slug":"extremely-rare-unorthodox-aircraft-reportedly-seen-flying-over-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/313835\/","title":{"rendered":"Extremely rare, unorthodox aircraft reportedly seen flying over Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

An image said to be a photo of an extremely rare aircraft flying over Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, the Beechcraft Starship, has been circulating on social media, grabbing the attention of the online aviation<\/a> community.<\/p>\n

Jaime\u00a0Edrosa, director of Addison Airport in Texas, told SFGATE by email Thursday that it\u2019s his \u201cunderstanding that one of our tenants currently has four of them based here.\u201d Aerospace Quality Research & Development (AQRD), an engineering company based in Addison near Dallas, says on its website<\/a> that it operates two airworthy Beech Starships, of which it says only four remain worldwide.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Created by Burt Rutan, an aeronautics engineer who pioneered several unorthodox aircraft like the Grizzly and the Boomerang<\/a>, the Beechcraft Starship was designed in 1982<\/a> and heralded as one of the most technologically advanced planes of its time. According to news reports in 1990, it featured an in-flight telephone, stereo systems and hidden cabinets of refreshments, and\u00a0was capable of transporting executives at 385 mph on their 600-mile trips. Described as a \u201cradically different\u201d luxury aircraft, it offered significantly\u00a0quieter travel for wealthy C-suite executives, and was made with a light epoxy composite material that was supposedly stronger than metal.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But from an economic perspective, the plane failed to take off: Manufacturing issues led to production delays, pushing the first official flight to 1986, and most of the aircraft were eventually leased out to Raytheon. Despite the starship\u2019s futuristic design, only a few of the 53 that were manufactured actually sold. As a result, most of them were doomed to scrap yards or placed in museums, and only a small handful exist today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The photo of the recent Starship sighting was posted on Monday<\/a>, showing the aircraft flying from a distance.\u00a0AQRD\u00a0says that it provides repairs and modifications for a broad range of aviation clients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An image said to be a photo of an extremely rare aircraft flying over Dallas Fort Worth International…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[112918,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-313835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-sfgnews","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}