Flying from Madrid to New York City?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from Madrid to New York City?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Flying from Madrid to New York City?
Add a departure date and see which side gets the sun.
Madrid → New York City
A long flight from Spain to United States. The clock rolls back 6 hours when you land.
The heart of Spain
Madrid sits high and dry on Spain's central plateau, a wide, grid-and-boulevard capital with no coast and a continental climate of hot summers and cold winters. It is one of Europe's more transit-friendly capitals: an extensive metro plus commuter rail covers the city and reaches the airport directly, and the historic core is easy to walk. Spanish life runs late, with dinner and the evening rhythm starting well after dark by other European standards. A car is rarely useful inside the city center.
Surrounding hubs
| 483 km / 300 mi | |
| 513 km / 319 mi | |
| 543 km / 337 mi |
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
| 300 km / 186 mi | |
| 342 km / 213 mi | |
| 537 km / 334 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.