score:19
You will find this information reported by travelers on many forums but as far as I know, there is no website that aggregates and provides a distribution of that information but this is a complex problem:
Seeing sunrise or sunset while in the air is spectacular, but you have to take a flight at the right time so that it is above the cloud cover during the event. At least, for those two moments choosing the best side is much easier: Sunset is West, sunrise is east.
Given all this info you will be hard-press to find a central resource since the subjective best view will really depend, on the flight, points of interest, time of day and prevailing winds (for many airports).
Upvote:-5
The best side of an aircraft to be in in flight is the inside, period.
Anything else is so subjective it's not going to be quantifiable. Some people actually prefer to sit somewhere where they don't have a window, so as to be able to sleep better without having sunlight stream into their face, and fellow passengers complain when they close the shade (yes, I've seen that happen).
Plus of course for every window seat there are usually (depending on aircraft type) several seats that are not window seats.
Upvote:6
For the best view you need to be on the DOWN-sun side, ie with the sun behind you. This lights up the ground best, and gets rid of the back-scatter from the sun-light through the scratches on the window.
Upvote:15
Punch in your flight code into a tracking site like FlightAware and take a look at the paths the plane flew previously. There's no guarantee that you'll fly exactly the same route — particularly around airports, takeoffs and landings frequently change runways/approach routes based on traffic, winds, etc — but the core of the route is likely to be pretty much the same.