Cyufjy

With seatguru.com you can see which window seats will have the view blocked by the aircraft wings, but that doesn't tell you which side of the plane has the "best" view. Is there a website that'll provide some insight into that?

Also, I realize "best" is a bit subjective but then again, hotel ratings on Expedia are also subjective. The fact that something is subjective doesn't mean that there aren't websites that address it or provide the ability for people to give feedback or something.

You will find this information reported by travelers on many forums but as far as I know, there is no website that aggregates and provides a distribution of that information but this is a complex problem:

• What is in view at take-off, cruising and landing is different, so some chances are that some of the great views might be visible from different sides on a single flight. I recall one announcement telling passengers on one side could witness a glacier separated from Greenland. Being on the other side I could not see any of it.


• Some airport configuration have a direction of landing and take-off which may be fixed per runway but most large airports allow planes to land either way and they usually direct them to land against the wind. Winds not always coming from the same direction means that sides can get reversed. It does happen often but if you can check weather-patters and figure out dominant winds you can have a better change of choose the better side.


• Even the time of the flight matters with a considerable different in view. Landing in Quito during the daytime shows the sprawling city to one side but an even more magnificent view of the Andes and several volcanoes. Turn this to night and the andes go completely back and the city looks like a constellation made of street lights.

Seeing sunrise or sunset while in the air is spectacular, but you have to take a flight at the right time so that it is above the cloud cover during the event. At least, for those two moments choosing the best side is much easier: Sunset is West, sunrise is east.

Given all this info you will be hard-press to find a central resource since the subjective best view will really depend, on the flight, points of interest, time of day and prevailing winds (for many airports).

Punch in your flight code into a tracking site like FlightAware and take a look at the paths the plane flew previously. There's no guarantee that you'll fly exactly the same route — particularly around airports, takeoffs and landings frequently change runways/approach routes based on traffic, winds, etc — but the core of the route is likely to be pretty much the same.

For the best view you need to be on the DOWN-sun side, ie with the sun behind you. This lights up the ground best, and gets rid of the back-scatter from the sun-light through the scratches on the window.

The best side of an aircraft to be in in flight is the inside, period.

Anything else is so subjective it's not going to be quantifiable.
Some people actually prefer to sit somewhere where they don't have a window, so as to be able to sleep better without having sunlight stream into their face, and fellow passengers complain when they close the shade (yes, I've seen that happen).

Plus of course for every window seat there are usually (depending on aircraft type) several seats that are not window seats.