You’re scrolling through a random patch of forest or a suburban neighborhood on Google Maps and then you see it. A giant, rainbow-fringed silhouette of a Boeing 747 or a narrow-body Airbus. It looks like it’s parked in someone's backyard or, more terrifyingly, like it’s underwater. It isn't.
Finding planes in flight on google maps has become a bit of an internet pastime for hobbyists and "map hunters." It’s a glitch in the matrix that isn't actually a glitch at all. It’s just how digital photography works when you’re trying to stitch together a billion pixels from a satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above the Earth.
The "Rainbow Effect" is not a Paint Job
If you look closely at these aerial captures, you’ll notice something weird. The plane usually looks like a blur of red, green, and blue. People online sometimes freak out and claim they’ve found a secret military cloaking device. Honestly, the reality is way more boring, but technically pretty cool.
Most high-resolution satellites, like the WorldView-3 operated by Maxar Technologies, don't take a single "photo" the way your iPhone does. They use multispectral sensors. These sensors capture different wavelengths of light—red, green, blue, and near-infrared—at slightly different moments in time.
Think about it this way. The satellite is moving at roughly 17,000 miles per hour. The plane is moving at 500 miles per hour. By the time the "red" sensor snaps its frame and the "blue" sensor follows a fraction of a second later, the plane has moved dozens of feet. When Google’s algorithms stitch those frames together to create a full-color map, the offsets create that ghostly, translucent rainbow effect. It's called chromatic aberration, though in this specific satellite context, it's more about the temporal gap between sensor exposures.
Why some planes look like they are underwater
One of the most viral examples of planes in flight on google maps occurred off the coast of Edinburgh, Scotland. A clear image appeared to show a twin-engine aircraft submerged just offshore. Panic ensued. Was it a crash?
No. It was just a plane flying at 30,000 feet.
The satellite camera is focused on the ground. Because the plane is significantly closer to the camera lens (the satellite) than the ground is, it creates a parallax effect. Sometimes the plane is blurred out or rendered with a transparency that makes it look like it's resting on the seabed. It’s an optical illusion caused by the way the image processing software blends multiple layers of imagery. Google Maps is a composite. It isn't a single "live" video feed. It’s a patchwork quilt of photos taken over months or even years. If a plane was in the air when the "top" layer was photographed, it gets baked into the map forever—or at least until the next update.
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The hunt for flight MH370 on Google Maps
We have to talk about the dark side of this hobby. Following the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 in 2014, thousands of "armchair investigators" flooded Google Maps. They claimed to find the wreckage in the Cambodian jungle or deep in the Indian Ocean.
Most of these were just planes in flight on google maps that happened to be passing through the frame when the satellite clicked the shutter.
Experts like Dr. Todd Humphreys from the University of Texas at Austin have pointed out that the precision of these images can be misleading. People see a sharp outline and assume it must be a stationary object on the ground. They forget that at the scale of a planet, a plane is a tiny, fast-moving speck. Mapping companies usually try to scrub these images out because they are technically "errors" in the data. They want a clean view of the topography, not a cluttered view of transit. But they miss a few. Actually, they miss a lot.
How the pros find them
If you want to find these yourself, don't just scroll aimlessly. That’s a waste of time. You’ll go blind.
Most successful hunters look near major hub airports like O'Hare in Chicago, Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta, or London Heathrow. Planes follow very specific "highways in the sky" called airways. If a satellite happens to be imaging a high-traffic corridor, the odds of catching a plane mid-air skyrocket.
- Look for the shadow. This is the giveaway. If you see a plane but the shadow is miles away, it’s definitely in flight.
- Check the color fringing. If it looks like a 3D movie without the glasses, it's a moving target.
- Zoom levels matter. Sometimes the plane only appears at a specific zoom level. If you zoom in or out, the map might switch to a different set of satellite data taken on a different day, and the plane will "vanish."
The tech behind the "Ghost Planes"
The imagery you see on Google Maps comes from a variety of sources. For the high-up stuff, it’s mostly Maxar or Airbus Intelligence satellites. For the super-sharp "3D" city views, Google actually uses airplanes equipped with specialized camera arrays.
When you see planes in flight on google maps in the high-res 3D mode, they look even weirder. They might look like crumpled pieces of paper or distorted metal shards. This is because the 3D modeling software tries to "drape" the flat image over a 3D mesh of the terrain. Since the software thinks the plane is part of the ground, it stretches the plane’s image over whatever is underneath it—trees, houses, or roads. It’s a mathematical mess.
Actionable steps for map explorers
If you’ve spotted something and you’re convinced it’s a crash or a secret base, do a reality check before posting it to Reddit.
First, check the coordinates on a different mapping service. Open up Bing Maps or Apple Maps. These companies buy different data sets. If the plane is there on Google but not on Bing, it was just a transient object in flight. It’s a ghost.
Second, look at the shadow. Calculate the distance between the plane and its shadow. If the shadow is significantly offset, that aircraft was likely several thousand feet in the air.
Third, use Google Earth Pro (the desktop version). It has a "Historical Imagery" tool. You can slide the timeline back. If the plane "disappears" in every other year’s photo, you’ve caught a momentary transit. It's a fun way to realize just how much traffic is moving above us at any given second.
Next time you see a rainbow-colored jet hovering over your neighborhood on your phone screen, don't call the authorities. It’s just a multi-million dollar satellite having a "slow" shutter moment.
To find your first "ghost plane," go to a coordinates database like Google Earth Hacks or search for known sightings near 45°05'10.0"N 123°19'50.0"W—though many get patched out quickly, the hunt is half the fun. Start by scanning the approach paths of your local international airport at a medium zoom level and look for those telltale red and blue streaks.