Which side of the plane for the sunrise?
The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, so the side depends on your heading. Flying north, the sunrise is out of the right-hand windows and the sunset out of the left; flying south it flips. Eastbound the sunrise is ahead of you, westbound the sunset is. Real routes wander, so SkyDot names the side from your live heading.
The rule, by direction of travel
Face the way the aircraft is pointing and put east on the correct hand. Flying north, east is to your right, so the sunrise is out of the right-hand windows and the sunset out of the left. Flying south, east is to your left and both swap over.
On an east-west route neither wing wins outright. The sunrise sits ahead of an eastbound flight and behind a westbound one, and the sunset the other way round — the light comes over the nose or the tail rather than a window, and you get a glow off whichever side the heading happens to be drifting toward.
- Flying north
- Sunrise right, sunset left
- Flying south
- Sunrise left, sunset right
- Flying east
- Sunrise ahead, sunset behind
- Flying west
- Sunset ahead, sunrise behind
Why your own route rarely fits the rule
Almost nothing flies due north. A route is a great circle bent around weather and airspace, so a flight billed as northbound can spend an hour on a heading closer to northeast, and the seat that had the sunrise at takeoff does not have it an hour later. The rule tells you which half of the aircraft to book; it cannot tell you the moment.
Altitude changes the time
The higher you are, the further over the horizon you can see, so the sun rises earlier and sets later than the times published for the ground beneath you. A ground-based sunset time is the wrong answer in a window seat, sometimes by many minutes.
And your heading decides the side
Knowing sunset is in 36 minutes is only half of it. SkyDot combines the sun’s bearing with the aircraft heading from your GPS track and tells you which side to look out of. That helps when you are picking a seat, and again once you are in it.
- Example
- Sunrise in 36 min — look right
- Works offline
- Yes
Questions
Which side of the plane is best for sunrise?
The right-hand side on a northbound flight, the left on a southbound one, because the sun comes up in the east. Eastbound it is ahead of you rather than off either wing, and westbound it is behind you.
Which side of the plane is best for sunset?
The left-hand side flying north and the right flying south — the mirror of the sunrise, because the sun goes down in the west. On a westbound flight it is ahead of you instead.
How do I work it out for my own route?
Take the compass direction between your departure and arrival airports and apply the rule to that. It gets you the right half of the aircraft for the booking. Since the actual heading wanders across a flight, SkyDot reads it live and names the side and the countdown while you are in the seat.
Does the sun almanac need a connection?
No. Sun position is calculated from your coordinates, altitude and the time, all of which the phone already has offline.