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One of the things I love about flying is the aerial view, especially so when you are at low altitude, i.e. around take-off and landing.

For my "home-" airport I know exactly which side of the plane I need to sit depending on the winds to have a beautiful view on a UNESCO world heritage site. For other airports I have been lucky sometimes and sometimes not.

Question: Is there an online-resource that tells me for any airport when there are good views and where on the plane one should be sitting for those, ideally taking into account different wind conditions that may prevail and the possible flight paths?

I am aware that I could look to Flightradar and monitor flight paths there but that does not tell me anything about the view when I don't know my destination well and does not really give good statistics about the wind unless I spend more time there than I should.

Further I could look for reviews on flying blogs/forums or videos of approaches but that does not give me statistics either and still takes a while.

So is there anything better than this, i.e. a website that would tell me: at airport XXX there is one runway, 60% of takeoffs go north and 40% south, if north sit on the left to have a great view on [insert attraction here] 2 mins after take-off, if south you will not see much.

There are various articles and threads about certain airports which have good advice regarding the likelihood of getting a good view from certain sides of an aircraft given origin, destination and prevailing winds, e.g.

• Daily Mail - various


• Bora Bora


• Dubai


• JFK


• Paris


• Hong Kong


• Seattle

Also, some aircraft air equipped with tail cams and belly cams and you can get a good view on the IFE, e.g.

Arriving Boston from airlinereporter.com on QR A350:

Underbelly camera from FT trip report on CX B777:

Obviously you'd need to research your airline and aircraft to see if this is a feature on your flight.

In general, whether or not you're likely to have a view from a certain side of the aircraft depends on the general direction of the flight, the prevailing winds at the airport (for wind direction probability), actual weather on the day if you can change seats shortly before your flight, runway configuration, and air traffic control. If I were going to research this for a particular flight, I would look at:

• Runway configuration and current weather, e.g. LHR/EGLL

• Prevailing wind direction by month, e.g. London

• Historical flight path for your flight, e.g. SQ221 SIN-SYD

I'm unaware of any site that does all of this and provides advice, but I would certainly bookmark it if I found it!

Alternatively, you could buy a flight simulator program and do your own fly bys!

Random youtube video: