Plane & Pilot Photo Of The Week: Finding Something Totally Unexpected On Google Earth

Our Plane & Pilot Photo Of The Week this week is a bizarre one, in which we chance upon something totally unexpected. It comes to you courtesy of Google Earth, which is our favorite app in the world right now.

We were conducting a little photographic research for an upcoming story in Plane & Pilot, looking for something in Alaska, when we zoomed in and stumbled upon an airliner and its shadow. At first it was only a white dot, but we wondered what that white dot could be. "A boat," we guessed. Wrong!

This is hardly the first time someone has found an airplane on Google Earth. However, it's rather rare, as Google, according to reports, removes planes from the view---it is, after all, a map and not a record of things seen. That said, you'll find many airplanes at airports around the world, so that can be a fun rabbit hole to dive into.

Occasionally, people will find planes in flight, often while they're on approach to land, but so far as we know, it's unheard of to capture both the plane and its perfect reflection in the water below it, as we did. And it is the first time we've found one by accident while looking for something completely different. Look for that story in the October issue of Plane & Pilot Magazine.