Planes must take off and land into the wind, so the direction of arrivals and departures is determined almost exclusively by wind direction. Approximately 70 percent of take offs annually are to the east with landings from the west.
How do flights decide their routes?
A Delta spokesperson tells Travel + Leisure that five main factors go into the selection process for new routes: demand, competitive positioning, operational feasibility, strategic value, and financial performance. And they're all very much interconnected, with the thresholds for each varying per route.
Why do planes take different routes?
Why don t planes fly in a straight line to their destination?
Firstly, the variation across different days is a result of pilots making the most of advantageous winds. Since jet streams and winds change and move across the Earth, the route can also change in order to avoid turbulence or align with a jetstream.
Do airlines use the same planes on the same routes?
Aircraft routing can be complex as some planes may have restrictions. There are also crew considerations for aircraft types. With US Airways we would often have similar types throughout the day going to the same destinations but not always or exclusively. In SLC we had 319's 320's and 321's all the same day.