What was that big military plane flying around downtown Kansas City Tuesday afternoon?

There’s a reason a large plane was flying around downtown Kansas City Tuesday afternoon, officials at Kansas City International Airport said.

The plane was a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, a versatile military transport aircraft, and it was being flown by the 139th Wing of the Missouri Air National Guard, based in St. Joseph.

St. Joseph is home to the Advanced Airlift Tactics Training Center, where they train pilots from the Air National Guard, Air Force Reserve Command Air Mobility Command and elsewhere.

Pilots training in St. Joseph have practiced touch and goes — where a pilot lands a plane then quickly accelerates to take off again — at Charles B. Wheeler Downtown Airport and the new terminal in Kansas City in the past, and officials said that’s what they were doing Tuesday.