Google Maps, with it’s satellite view and street view, is one of the better time wasters on the web. I love zooming in and getting a different perspective on areas around the world.

One day I was curious if the resolution was good enough to be able to tell which airline an airplane was part of, so I took a look at LaGuardia (LGA) to see if I could make them out. I found the following picture interesting:

As you can see, there seems to be a plane halfway down the runway, taking off; one at the end of the runway, about to take off; and one a few hundred feet out, about to land. About to land?

Wow, they really stack ‘em up at LGA.

It’s 99% likely that the shot of the plane landing was taken at a different time and the sets were “stitched” together.

It looks to me that the plane that’s in the act of taking off is American because it appears to not have a painted fuselage. The plane waiting to take off could be Northwest because it appears to have a light gray paint job. Can’t tell the plane about to land because the quality is different, another sign it’s been stitched in.

Plane taking off

Plane waiting to take off

Plane landing (that was the closest Google would let me get)