I’ve been looking at Google Maps a lot lately, planning out ride possibilities around Tegeler Forst / Jungfernheide, or deducing where I’ve been on my morning training ride — actually Open Street Maps is much better, but sometimes I like the satellite view. Which led me to wondering if the old jet at the far south-west end of Flughaven Tegel was also on the satellite view.

Yes! And so were many other planes. I wondered also if any private jets might be lurking, god know why I might want to go looking for those, which led to seeing a plane just past the eastern end of the runway, which only made sense if it was actually taking off. Oh, neat, the satellite data for Google Maps caught a plane taking off! But further back on the same runway is another plane.

Certainly not also taking off, because it was physically too close and anyway there needs to be a minute or two between takeoffs because of turbulence, so perhaps it was landing. Pretty snug arrangement of arrival and departure then.

But then there turns out to be another plane on the same runway further back. And another. And another. Four on the same runway. Hmm maybe taxi-ing to the other runway? And scrolling a bit further right, above the grass at the end of the runway? Oh, another!

So being the quick thinker I am (har), I realise it’s all the same plane, a Lufthansa Boeing 737-500 (I spent half an hour looking at Lufthansa fleet planforms to work out that), captured repeatedly in the process of taking off by the satellite as it made the image tiles over Flughaven Tegel, and further away near Kurt-Schuman Damm, Scharnwerberstr, Cambridgerstr, and finally vanishing just after Höllanderstr.

Anyway, it was amusing for me late last night after a week where I racked up nearly 60 hours of coding and became decidedly incapable of communicating outside of a screen.