Flying from New York City to Boston?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from New York City to Boston?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from New York City to Boston?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
New York City → Boston
A short flight within United States. Your watch stays put on arrival.
The city that never sleeps
New York is a dense five-borough city served by three major airports: JFK and LaGuardia in Queens, and Newark Liberty across the Hudson in New Jersey. Manhattan carries the main business districts, museums, theaters, and postcard skyline, but Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island are not side notes; they are much of the city. A car is rarely useful for visitors once they are inside the core. Airport choice matters here because each airport starts the ground trip from a different edge of the region.
City access
JFK sits in southern Queens, on the New York side of the state line. The AirTrain links every terminal to the subway and the Long Island Rail Road at Jamaica and Howard Beach, so central Manhattan is a train ride with one change rather than a one-seat trip. Allow around an hour to Midtown by rail, and longer by taxi once traffic builds.
Nearby airports
| 17 km / 11 mi | |
| 33 km / 21 mi | |
| 151 km / 94 mi |
Surrounding hubs
| 342 km / 213 mi | |
| 537 km / 334 mi | |
| 588 km / 365 mi |
The Cradle of Liberty
Boston is a compact, old city built on a tangle of colonial-era streets that famously refuse to run in a grid, wrapped by the Charles River and the harbor. The T, the country's oldest subway system, covers the core well, and much of the city is genuinely walkable. Winters are cold and snowy, summers humid, and a car in the center is more liability than asset given the narrow streets and scarce parking. The city's many universities give it a younger, more transient population than its old buildings suggest.
Surrounding hubs
| 322 km / 200 mi | |
| 409 km / 254 mi | |
| 450 km / 280 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.