Flying from New York City to Tokyo?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from New York City to Tokyo?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from New York City to Tokyo?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
New York City → Tokyo
A very long flight from United States to Japan. Tokyo is 13 hours ahead. Turn your watch forward before you arrive.
This route crosses the Arctic Circle, the latitude where the sun never sets at midsummer.
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
| 817 km / 508 mi | |
| 295 km / 183 mi | |
| 300 km / 186 mi |
The world's largest metropolis
Tokyo anchors the most populous metropolitan area on Earth, a sprawling lowland of districts that each feel like a city in their own right. It runs on an unrivaled web of trains and subways, punctual and dense, that makes a car pointless for most visitors. The center has no single heart but many, with government, business, and shopping districts spread across the rail map. Its two airports lie at very different distances from the city, so the choice matters.
City access
Haneda is the close-in airport, on Tokyo Bay just south of the city, and usually the faster arrival. Rail and monorail links reach the center in well under an hour, and it handles a growing share of international flights. If you can choose, Haneda saves time over the farther airport.
Nearby airports
| 60 km / 37 mi |
Surrounding hubs
| 1,210 km / 752 mi | |
| 282 km / 175 mi | |
| 432 km / 268 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.