I was never a fan of the Starship.
Now the Piaggio Avanti, that's another story. That as to be one of the most beautiful plane ever made. I regularly see one flying out of CYUL, and in fact saw it sitting at an FBO yesterday night when I left work (sitting in the same spot where a Falcon 7X was last Thursday).
The Avanti is a pretty remarkable aircraft in many ways - and I get to see them nearly every day, as our neighbours on the airport have three of them.
First of all, it's quite large inside - you can actually stand up straight inside the cabin (an impossibility in nearly all small corporate aircraft), and it has a huge amount of room inside for passengers - again, it's much bigger than just about anything in its price range. Secondly, due to it's efficient design, the Avanti is stupendously fast - with a cruise speed of almost 400 knots (460 mph or 730 km/h), it's actually faster than most light business jets - it can match speed with a good number of pure jet aircraft and on longer flights, it can outrun them, as it can skip a fuel stop that the pure jet must make (with a similar amount of payload on each aircraft, that is). What is even more incredible is that the Avanti is as fast as it is with only 1700 horsepower available from the engines - the King Air 200 I flew in my last job has exactly that much power, yet it could only muster about 280 knots if I pushed it.
The Avanti does have some downsides and quirks to it, however. Up until a few years ago, there was a lot of doubt about the future of Piaggio and their continued support for the Avanti - these concerns are gone now, but finding out that the manufacturer has pulled up stakes and is no longer supporting your multi-million dollar purchase is enough to scare off just about anyone in the business. Also, while the placement of the engines and props has some major advantages, it does create some problems - the aircraft isn't really able to operate from gravel airstrips (this is important here in Canada, especially north of 60), and the noise it makes isn't particularly endearing to anyone living near an airport:
[video=youtube;R-0tRRcXmpE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-0tRRcXmpE&feature=related[/video]
The small wing does also create some problems - the high wing loading increases takeoff, approach and landing speeds quite a bit, so large flaps are needed to bring those down to more normal levels. One other minor quirk of the Avanti is that when it collects ice on the front wing (it isn't a canard - I'll explain that in a moment), the aircraft starts oscillating in pitch - in other words, the nose starts bobbing up and down.
Now, the front wing explanation. A canard is a front-mounted horizontal stabiliser, complete with elevator (the control surface used to control aircraft pitch). The front wing of the Avanti does not have an elevator on it - it has a flap like the main wing, but not an elevator. The elevator on the Avanti is on the conventionally-placed horizontal stabiliser at the rear of the aircraft.