Other people have already answered the question but it reminded me of something I thought of a little while back . IMO It ' d be nice to be able to assign the aircraft to cover a sector , either a specific area or a direction and distance from your ship , i . e . a set position or relative position but within a limited radius of course . Ideally the radius would probably be no more than that of the circle they currently fly around your ship which seems to be a couple of km to keep it balanced , but that way you can use it to cover specific areas such as down a channel where torps might be coming or on the other side of the island you ' re behind or scouting ahead to give early warning on lurking DDs without having to rely on luck or wait so that the plane is where you want it when you need it . I assume the easiest way to assign this would be via the map . If assigned to a position relative to your ship it ' d fly a smaller 0 . 5 km ? circle over that area and try and maintain that vector as you move , if assigned to an area on the map it ' d do the same but return to the usual circling if you move out of range . Telling it to attack some aircraft would also cancel the current order perhaps .