This web page shows a few typical air patterns (with commentary). The main point is to understand patterns to to see that, whereas there are stereotypical ones, they are changed at different times and there are variations.
All images show air traffic over a one hour interval beginning with the date and time marker in the upper left of each image. Glenwood Lake (GL) neighborhood marked in white circle (size may vay image to image).
This one hour interval, on a morning I thought was unusually quiet, shows a typical landing pattern with a key variation to allow for departing planes.
Planes head NE up the Hudson River (or over Manhattan).. They turn SE and then SW to land at LGA. (Pink arrows in annotated image.) This is a very common pattern and planes making the 180 degrees course change often fly directly over GL neighborhood, but only one does during this one hour period.
The variation in this morning's flight pattern is that planes taking off from LGA headed SE made a sharp 180 degrees turn to head NW. (Green arrows in annotated image.)
This basic pattern continues to 10:00 AM when departures change by 180 degrees and a new very common landing path takes hold.
At noon, the landing path over lower Westchester is eliminated from the flight patterns.
Only one plane during this hour flew directly over GL.
I am posting the next two pictures to show that patterns can change from Tuesday to Wednesday in the same time slot as well as within one day by hour; neither of these pictures have the same patterns as above or to each other.
In the two 6 to 7AM slots, departures head in different directions and on the second day, there appear to be no arrivals from the NE because this is now a path for departures.
This pattern from Halloween beginning at 9:42 pm shows a pattern similar to the first one on this web page, but the path of the turns on the approach to LGA is very tight over GL neighborhood. At least 13 planes went over in an hour.
This shows that a slight adjustment path (in this case south) or making the paths overlap tighly instead of dispersing them, may change from a relatively quiet hour to a noisy one.
Only looking at this hour, a reasonable conclusion would be GL is targeted for air traffic. Looking at the first image on this page, a reasonable conclusion would be that GL was just barely spared, a little to the south of concentrated flight path.
Thus the importance of looking at trends over longer periods of time.
