The appeal of staring at flight maps from your airplane seat

Nicole Sunderland doesn’t have to ponder the in-flight entertainment options when she looks at the screen on the plane seat in front of her.

She’ll be watching the map, thank you very much.

“I’ll fly to Qatar for 14 hours and that map will be on the entire time,” said Sunderland, 41, a content creator and consultant who splits time between the D.C. area and Phoenix. Flight attendants don’t always understand: “Sometimes they’ll reach in and be like, ‘Do you want us to turn it off?’ And I’m like, ‘No, no. Leave it on.'”

She’s part of a robust group of fliers who keep their eyes on the plane’s progress. The practice got a blast of publicity last year amid a social media trend that featured travelers – mostly men – staring straight ahead at maps or blank space during long trips to prove … s