Flying from Dubai to Riyadh?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from Dubai to Riyadh?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from Dubai to Riyadh?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Dubai → Riyadh
A short flight from United Arab Emirates to Saudi Arabia. Set your watch back 1 hour on arrival.
The city that rose from the desert
Dubai is a coastal city on the Persian Gulf that grew in a few decades into a dense spine of towers strung along a single highway. Most of what visitors come for sits near the water or that main road: the beaches, the malls, Dubai Creek, the old trading waterway, and the tallest building in the world. It is hot for much of the year and built around cars and taxis, though a driverless metro runs the length of the city. Distances look short on a map but stretch out in the heat.
Nearby airports
| 116 km / 72 mi |
Surrounding hubs
| 1,699 km / 1,056 mi | |
| 347 km / 216 mi | |
| 378 km / 235 mi |
The desert capital
Riyadh sits on a high desert plateau in central Saudi Arabia, a fast-modernizing capital of wide boulevards and an increasingly dense skyline. The Riyadh Metro's Yellow Line runs directly to all of King Khalid International's terminals, a fast and recent addition to what was, until 2024, a thoroughly car-dependent city. Summers are extremely hot and dry, regularly exceeding 45°C (113°F), with mild, pleasant winters. Outside the metro's reach, the city is still built primarily for cars, with wide highways connecting its sprawling districts.
Surrounding hubs
| 852 km / 529 mi | |
| 353 km / 219 mi | |
| 421 km / 262 mi |
Find out which side of the plane to sit on.
Pick your airports, set your departure time, and you're done.
We calculate the sun's position based on your flight path and departure time, then tell you which side of the plane gets direct sun and which stays shaded. No guessing, just math.
Enter your flight
Pick your departure and arrival airports and set your departure time at the departure airport. FlightSide estimates the duration and you can adjust it if you know the exact schedule.
We track the sun along your route
Your flight path is broken into hundreds of points. At each one we check where the sun is and which side of the plane it faces.
You get a recommendation
Which side of the plane to sit on, left or right, depending on whether you'd rather avoid the sun or enjoy it. The percentages and the map are there if you want to see why.
Want to go deeper? Accuracy, edge cases, polar routes — see the FAQ →
Notes from the product.
Small updates, route observations, and clearer explanations for how the app keeps evolving.
Type less, wait less, wonder more
Airport search now understands metro codes and old city names, FlightSide loads noticeably faster, and a new Feeling lucky button chooses a flight for anyone without one in mind.
A closer look at the route, not just the seat
FlightSide now shows the two cities and key details about the flight alongside the seat recommendation: confirm you picked the right airports, read the time change off two clocks, and check the return leg.
It's all about the sun (after all)
Not all sunlight reaches the side windows. FlightSide now weighs the sun’s angle to the cabin and shows twilight along the route.