Mysterious plane puzzle from GTA San Andreas solved after 20 years. Obbe Vermeij, the technical director of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, explains that small aircraft were spawned near the player to simulate flybys.
So the jets really come out of nowhere, unplanned. Crashes occur because the planes in GTA only scan very slowly when generating whether there is an object in their flight path - and even small obstacles cause an immediate crash. What secrets GTA 6 has to offer when it releases remains the next big question.