Ask HN: No planes visible at LHR on Google Maps (terrain)?
If you look at London Heathrow in terrain mode on Google Maps no planes are visible. Most other airports have at least some planes visible at the gates. Why is this?
If you look at London Heathrow in terrain mode on Google Maps no planes are visible. Most other airports have at least some planes visible at the gates. Why is this?
in Google Earth it says it was taken 10/04/2020
1. That was during the first corona lockdown. In that case, the airport would mostly be closed. However news reports say that the airports were kind of open with some flights flying during lockdown (massively reduced - 60 vs 600)
2. Looking at the date gives another clue. April 10 is Good Friday, the Friday before Easter weekend. Good Friday is a big national "bank holiday" when most things are shut in the UK. Therefore even less flights that day.
But if the airplanes weren't flying, they would be parked on the ground somewhere. So where are all the airplanes in your theory? There are zero in parking.
Very few parked cars too. I see the same phenomenon at London Gatwick Airport as well. Perhaps an internet sleuth can find out what time the image was captured (e.g. the control tower has a distinct shadow that can be measured) and see if it lines up with any specific event.
I see the same suspicious lack of aircraft on the ground. It's really interesting. I see one Qantas aircraft taxiing onto runway 09R, and a Saudi aircraft taxiing into parking from 09R, and that's it. Also interesting is that I see a bunch of trucks on both ends of runway 09L. The Google Maps imagery of other major airports, and even military airfields, shows many aircraft on the ground.
I've found a few references around the web to an effort by Google Maps, about five years ago, to remove non-static objects likes cars and pedestrians from the satellite views. The algorithm is cool, but I guess there's nothing more interesting to this than that.
As an aside, when I was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011-2012, I worked on an airfield and forward operating base that got hammered with effective rocket and mortar fire on a daily basis. I was... annoyed to discover that Google Maps satellite view showed our footprint in perfect detail; like I could see the tent where I slept, where every one of our aircraft parked, etc. It's not like anything about it was secret, but the imagery could certainly provide good targeting information for whoever wanted to shoot at us. I wish things had been removed from the imagery back then. It stayed that way until 2021 or 2022, long after we'd abandoned that place.
I hope they do that for Street View.
Actually, I would like it to be a toggle. Sometimes I might want to know if a place is likely to be busy or not. Sometimes there's a bus blocking the storefront that I want to see.
Yes sorry I meant satellite!!
Maybe someone from HN could help fix the title + desc if possible :))
I assume you mean satellite and not terrain mode. Terrain mode doesn't have images so there are no planes visible at any airports. As for satellite mode I looked briefly and noticed 2 planes.
Yes I meant satellite. Still strange as it's one of the busiest airports in the world and images appear to be taken during the day so... no way there were only 2 planes at any given point... For example Gatwick (LGW) does show quite a few planes just parked.
Depends on when the images were taken. They might have been taken during the pandemic when passengers planes were grounded.
Grounded where? The point is that they aren't on the ground in this imagery.
Airplanes grounded for extended periods are not kept at airports but flown to airplane storage facilities.
That's really strange. I don't see any planes in gates at LGW either, but spot checked other airports that have planes in gates.
Why would planes be visible? It’s not a satellite app.
I think he means the "satellite" layer, not the "terrain" layer.
Yes sorry!! :)