Quiet week, fresher data, a few fixes

No headline feature this week. Time mostly went into keeping the basics solid, fixing a few things that were slightly wrong and pulling in a newer version of the airport and timezone data FlightSide relies on.

The footer shows when that dataset was last refreshed. Timezone rules do change, especially around daylight saving decisions, so an older file can mean an hour's drift on some routes. If the date looks recent, the sun and seat hints should line up with the map.

Two things worth knowing before you pick a seat

Departure time matters more than most people expect

On east-west routes especially, the angle between the aircraft and the sun shifts enough over a couple of hours that the recommended side can flip entirely. This happens because the sun moves roughly 15 degrees across the sky every hour. A 2pm departure on a long transatlantic route can put the sun squarely on one side for most of the flight, while a 4pm departure on the same route catches a lower sun that has moved far enough to favor the other window.

It's most noticeable on long east-west routes, but shows up on shorter hops too. If you have some flexibility on when you fly, checking a couple of departure times before settling on a seat preference is usually worth the extra minute.

When neither side wins

On equatorial routes around midday, the sun sits close to directly overhead. Neither window gets meaningful direct light because the angle is too steep for the sun to reach far into the cabin from either side. The result ends up near 50/50, or sometimes shows a slight edge based on the exact path, but nothing that really makes a difference.

A Nairobi to Lagos flight, for example, crosses the tropics in the middle of the day. The route runs roughly east to west at low latitudes, and around noon the sun is nearly straight up. That near 50/50 result isn't uncertainty. It is just what is actually happening. Both sides are roughly equal, and an aisle seat often makes more sense than committing to either window.

Try the same route at two different departure times and see how much it shifts.