Near the Oregon border, just inside Washington state, there’s a small aircraft at a very odd angle. Given that we can clearly see its undercarriage, it would seem likely that this aircraft is right in the middle of a loop the loop!

The distortion of the plane is probably due to it being near the edge of an individual photo (where the images are warped to merge them together smoothly), but no amount of distortion could reveal its underside…

Thanks to Eduardo Sao Clemente and Eric.

Since 1925, the Goodyear Blimp has been an integral part of American sports culture, probably more famous than the tyre company whose logo is along the side.

Goodyear have built more than 300 blimps over the years and today there are three which officially share the “Goodyear blimp” name.

The “Spirit of America” has been California’s blimp since 2002 and has a full-time crew of 18, which covers pilots, engineers, cameramen, etc.

The ‘Spirit of Innovation‘, seen here flying over its hometown of Pompano Beach, Florida, was named last year in a web-based public poll (and that was the best they could come up with?).

The third of the fleet, ‘Spirit of Goodyear’ sadly can’t be seen on Google Earth as yet. However, worldwide there’s at least another 3 blimps with the Goodyear emblem.

In Brazil, flying over the city of Sao Paulo, is ‘Spirit of the Americas‘.

And roaming around Europe somewhere are two blimps, both called “Spirit of Europe“. Here’s one of them, parked in a English airbase.

On a slightly related note, can you guess which company produces the most tyres annually. Goodyear? Michelin? Pirelli? All wrong: the correct answer is LEGO, who produce 306 million tiny tyres each year

More Goodyear blimp info on the Official Website, Wikipedia and MyAirship.com

Thanks: JosieNorden and Virtual Globetrotting.

Update: Google Maps has now been updated with the latest images, so will look the same as Google Earth

During last year’s war in Lebanon between Hezbollah and Israel, excellent Google Earth news site Ogle Earth mentioned that Google would “soon” be updating the images of Lebanon, but were keen to stress that this was not side-taking on the controversial conflict.

However, for some reason these images did not appear in Google Earth and Lebanon appeared as pre-conflict up until the most recent image update just a few days ago. Google Maps has not yet received the same image update, so until it does we can use the two sources to compare areas before and after.

Central Beruit, Before:

Central Beruit, After:

Runways at Beirut International Airport, Before:

Runways at Beirut International Airport, After:

If you zoom in on the runways you’ll also see that they’re busying repairing bomb craters:

The full story of the conflict is, of course, on Wikipedia.

This is Barra Airport, located on the hebridean island of Barra.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, it’s something along the lines of “No, you idiot, that’s a beach!“.

You’re exactly right: Barra airport is the beach. In fact, it’s the only airport in the world where scheduled flights land on a beach.

Of course, that schedule has to change regularly, as the airport’s three runways all become completely unusable during high-tide.

The beach is open to the public, and supposedly good for cockle picking, all you have to do is check at the control tower to see if the airport is currently operational.

More info and ground level pictures here and on Wikipedia

Thanks: Adam Rus & nikitakou

At this air base in Jordan we find six C101 jets on the runway, and although they’re not yet flying, they are in formation! These jets are actually Spanish-designed CASA C-101 Aviojets, which are currently in use by the air forces of Jordan, Chile, Honduras, and of course Spain.

C-101s are actually also used by the Spanish aerobatic display team, Patrulla Águila which is based here at the Spanish Air Force Academy, San Javier.

So are these planes part of the display team? Difficult to say, but there’s a lot of them here, so it’s more likely these are just air force pilot training planes.¹

More on the Royal Jordanian Air Force, aerobatics and the CASA C-101 jet at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Ramez Yaghnam and acalorado.