OT: LHR on Google Earth

...planes /shown on/ runways or gates...

Well, there's one plane on runway 09 R and maintenance vehicles on 27 R

But the airport and hotel carparks are mostly empty too, so images from during lockdown?

Even that one plane isn't on Google Earth Pro (the separate Windows program).

No cars on the M4, no trains (other than parked ones) from Paddington.

Why have the aliens stolen all moving transport?

West of approximately Maidenhead all becomes normal, trains and cars again. I wonder why?

Google use AI to 'improve' their images, resulting in inventing imaginary planes:

No no no - it's to *stop* aliens stealing all moving transport

Are these actually satellite images? I thought they were taken from survey planes, which might be difficult over a major airport?

Not if you have permission from air traffic control. However, it was probably easier to get that over London during lockdown than at other times.

They usually display the date each image was taken. Max-covid would be an obvious suggestion.

Your Maidenhead images were probably from a quite different date.

It's the precursor to net zero. In a few year's time, it'll be the norm. Only private planes of the rich and famous will be allowed, as they travel to climate change conferences.

streetview images show the acquisition date (or month?) but I think aerial maps always shows current year as copyright date.

The historical images, however acquired, show planes, trains and automobiles, and they exist on the current image eg west of Maidenhead. Clearly, Google has removed them from a large area, but why?

I get a free newspaper delivered every so often, don't know by whom, called 'The Light' and styled as a 'Truthpaper'. It's a 24 carat howling-at-the-moon nutjob fest which makes Cursitor Doom look almost half sane, and from it I learn that I'd be considered a 'conspiracy denier'.

Bob knows what they'd make of the vanishing transport.

No, this isn't it. No vehicles on the motorway, no trains and no planes, not even parked. They've been edited out for some reason.

Yes, they would have been, the shading/lighting clearly changes between the train/no train areas.

covid is a way simpler explanation ...

For the same reason the colonialists grabbed all the interesting stuff the indigenese had.

So those unspeakable terrorists can't plan their next attack.

Yep

Nope.l

There are some vehicles on the roads, most of which look like commercial vehicles. There are also some cars in the car parks, but nowhere near as many as usual. All the airport's luggage trains and transfer buses are neatly parked up and seem to occupy all available parking spaces. There are two, apparently moving, aircraft at Heathrow. It all points to lockdown and, given the parking fees, nobody would park an aircraft at Heathrow for longer than needed to unload and load passengers. The ones parked at Gatwick are parked in areas used by aircraft based there.

The two outer port engines have intermeshed propeller blades.

I guess AI has some way to go.