The best seats on airplanes are window seats.
But should you take the left or right window?

Window seats are indisputably the best seats on the plane. Flying into New York, you can see the Manhattan skyline. Landing in Seattle, you can see the Space Needle. The distinctive River Visual approach into National Airport in DC provides a view of the Washington Monument, the White House, and other DC landmarks.

But the view you get on approach into an airport is determined by which side of the plane you sit on. If you're flying into an airport you're not familiar with, it can be difficult to know whether to pick a window on the left or right side of the plane. This project is an attempt to help answer that question.

The insight of this project is that population density is a good proxy for the quality of the view which an area provides, so if you can figure out what sort of population density you are seeing out of each side of the plane on approach, you can determine which view is best:

Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (KSEA)

You're likely to see more population-dense areas if you take a window seat on the right side of the aircraft.

New York John F. Kennedy International Airport (KFJK)

You're likely to see more population-dense areas if you take a window seat on the right side of the aircraft.

Chicago O'Hare International Airport (KORD)

You're likely to see more population-dense areas if you take a window seat on the left side of the aircraft.

Methodology

The maps show census block groups shaded by (population density)^2 * (number of flights that see the block group). The recommendations for picking a side of the airplane are based on summing the (population density)^2 * (number of flights that see the block group) for each block group seen out the left and right windows of the airplane, and then comparing the two calculated values.