Did Air Force One fly over us last night? (11:40 a.m. update)

SooToday.com and other local newsrooms have been receiving calls from people in both Northern Ontario and Northern Michigan who saw a 747 passenger jet last night, accompanied by six fighter jets.

"My whole family saw them!" one faithful reader told SooToday.com at 7:27 p.m. "We were back at our cottage on Lake Huron closer to Bruce Mines. We were all convinced it was Air Force One by the looks of it."

This reader reported that the 747 was blue.

"It was just a really impressive sight! Never seen anything like that before, and it was loud! You just had to look up!"

Callers to the Oldies 93 newsroom in the Michigan Soo said the fighter-escorted plane was seen flying southeast over the Twin Saults around 6:45 p.m.

Last night, SooToday.com contacted North American Air Defence Command (NORAD) at Canadian Forces Base North Bay, City Police, Ontario Provincial Police and the Sault Ste. Marie Airport, all of whom knew nothing about the mysterious aircraft.

We are unaware that President Obama was travelling yesterday, but found an intriguing report about jet fighters being scrambled by NORAD late last week when a couple of single-engine aircraft violated Air Force One's airspace near Las Vegas.

This morning, SooToday.com contacted Mark Knoller, veteran White House correspondent for CBS News, who's been tracking U.S. presidents since Gerald Ford and is considered the most knowledgeable man in Washington on the daily activities of the president, maintaining an exhaustive database of every presidential action.

Communicating to us via Twitter, here's what Knoller made of what our readers saw: "Pres. Obama flies to Michigan on Thursday, so AF-1 crew likely doing practice runs. Routine procedure."

This morning, Sault Ste. Marie Airport Manager Terry Bos confirmed to SooToday.com that the seven-plane formation flew over the Sault airport at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, but didn't land.

Bos says that so far, he's been unable to find anyone who'll tell him much about the planes.

One SooToday.com reader speculated that it might have been Elton John and his entourage flying in for tonight's concert at the Essar Centre.

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