What state am I flying over right now? How to tell from your seat

Without Wi-Fi, the easiest way to know what state you're flying over is a map of your route that works offline, showing where the plane is now. With that, the river, lake or city below gets a name quickly. From the window alone, state lines are invisible, but big natural features, coastlines and city lights make it possible to place yourself.

Ways to find out

1. The seatback map, if your plane has screens. It usually shows your position and nearby cities.
2. Wi-Fi, if your flight has it: a live flight status or tracking page shows the plane's position.
3. An offline flight map on your phone. Add your flight before takeoff, while you're online. FlyingOver doesn't use GPS: it combines several data sources, such as airline and airport data, weather and on-time statistics, to estimate where the plane is, and shows it on a map from any seat, in airplane mode. Read how to track your flight without Wi-Fi.
4. Your phone's GPS, which on most phones still works in airplane mode, but often only with the phone pressed to the window, and only with maps you downloaded. Read does GPS work in airplane mode?

Which states will I fly over? 10 cross-country routes

We traced the shortest path (the great circle) of 10 popular cross-country routes over the US state boundaries published by the Census Bureau. The table lists the states each one crosses, in order, and the state with the longest stretch.

A few things stand out:

• New York to Los Angeles crosses 13 states. The longest stretch is over Kansas, about 390 miles.
• Colorado is the state you're most likely to fly over. Apart from California, where most of these flights land, it's on 6 of the 10 routes.
• Miami to Los Angeles crosses only 6 states, because about 600 miles of the route are over the Gulf of Mexico.
• New York to Seattle spends about 270 miles over the Great Lakes, and its longest stretch over land is Montana, about 550 miles.

Real flights rarely follow the shortest path exactly. Winds, weather and air traffic control can move a route by tens or even hundreds of miles, so your flight may cross a state or two that isn't in the table. See why planes fly curved routes.

How far you can see from cruising altitude

Airliners cruise between flight levels 290 and 410, roughly 29,000 to 41,000 feet. A simple formula gives the distance to the horizon: about 1.23 times the square root of your height in feet, in miles. From 35,000 feet, that's around 230 miles.

In practice, haze, clouds and low contrast can limit what you actually see to much less. On a clear day, though, big features stand out far beyond the towns directly below.

What's easy to recognize

• Coastlines and the Great Lakes. Their shapes match the map, even when towns don't.
• Big rivers such as the Mississippi, with their wide bends.
• Mountain ranges such as the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, often snow-capped.
• Canyons and deserts in the Southwest, where the ground has few clouds and strong colors.
• Field patterns. Over much of the Midwest and Great Plains, the land is laid out in a grid of square fields and roads. Circular fields come from center-pivot irrigation.
• Cities at night, traced by lights along highways.

Which side of the plane you see these from depends on the route that day, and routes change with winds and air traffic control. See why planes fly curved routes.

Why the map in your phone might disagree with the view

Like any estimate, FlyingOver's position can differ for a while, for example when the plane holds before landing or is rerouted around weather. It updates as soon as you're back online. Read why is my plane circling?