What states does a plane pass over on a flight from Los Angeles, CA to New York, NY?

Question

Or does it depend? I'm really not sure, but I've always wondered. And if it depends, what states is the plane more likely to go over? Does it matter if it's a non-stop flight? I think it does, but again I'm not entirely sure. I'm thinking of taking a trip and I was hoping to know what states I'd be passing over before hand, not just hear it from the pilot as it happens. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

Kelly, the route depends on any en-route stops, and the winds and weather. Long haul flight plans are made by computers which figure the load to be carried, the en-route temperature and the en-route winds. With fuel costing what it does, there may be $10,000 or more difference in fuel costs between one route and another.

Go to the URL  shown below and put in your flight number and you can see what route the flight is taking today. Look again tomorrow and see if it has changed. You can look at the city pairs and see each of the different flights and see what routes they are using. The weather channel meteorologists usually show the jet stream  and aircraft fly in it when they can.

Regards,

Dan

Answer 2

It depends. For a nonstop flight it depends mostly on weather and air traffic considerations. For a connecting flight (or through flight with intermediate stop) the plane of course has to fly over, at least, the state where it is going to land before heading to new york.

Answer 3

There is no way to predict it in advance. The route can vary from day-to-day depending on weather, air traffic, and prevailing winds. The airline may request a specific route from air traffic control but not get it. They might request a different route tomorrow in order to take advantage of prevailing winds or to avoid thunderstorms.

On my last trip, the route on the outbound flight was different from the route for the return flight. That's not unusual.

Sometimes, even the pilot doesn't know the exact route until after departure. For transatlantic flights, the pilot does not receive the route over the ocean until after the aircraft is airborne! He only knows the route to the transatlantic crossing point at takeoff.

Answer 4

It does vary from flight to flight. For instance, you may have to fly around a storm. I just pulled up a flight from LAX to JFK and it's passing through California, the tip of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, the tip of Arkansas, Missouri, the tip of Illinois, Kentucky, West Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, then New York.

Answer 5

yeah, it does depend on numerous things (weather is one of them)

I think a flight from LA to New York would probably pass over the lower midwest states and the southern states because geographically, LA is lower than NY.

Answer 6

Airplanes follow certain set routes, and, as with highways, there is often more than one.  I'm sure that's the case with transcontinental flights, there being more northern and southern routes.  They would be used to avoid crowded skies or bad weather  or take advantage of the wind.  The East-to-West and West-to-East routes might be slightly different too.

To get a rough idea, just take a map of the US and draw a straight line from LA to NY.  The route might be somewhat North or South of that, and it might be slightly curved on a flat map, but it would give you a good idea.

Any flight that stopped along the way would almost certainly have to deviate from the direct route, because places like Chicago or Dallas or St Louis don't necessarily conveniently fall on the direct route.