In 2026, planes fly over your house because your home is likely situated under a flight path or "Standard Terminal Arrival Route" (STAR) used by a nearby airport. Flight paths are not random; they are precisely defined corridors governed by Air Traffic Control (ATC) to ensure safe separation between aircraft and to manage the flow of traffic into and out of busy hubs. Factors like wind direction play a huge role; planes must take off and land into the wind for lift and safety, meaning an airport may "reverse" its traffic flow when the wind shifts, suddenly sending planes over neighborhoods that were quiet the day before. Additionally, the implementation of NextGen (GPS-based) navigation has made flight paths more "concentrated." Instead of a wide fan of planes, GPS allows aircraft to follow a very narrow, "rail-like" path, which is great for fuel efficiency but means the houses directly underneath that line experience a "constant" stream of noise while homes just a few blocks away hear nothing at all.