It all comes down to your playstyle. You can play it slow and go for loot and evade or you can go balls deep into a large group and just start fist fighting while looking for a weapon in the opening seconds. It's great fun either way.
Both play-styles can work too. If you can kill all your opponents at the military base - you and your squad are typically the most well armed and equipped. High risk/high reward type thing.
Slow play can work as well but you do rely on more luck that you find the items you need to compete, imo.
I like to pick a high loot area that is well outside the plane path, typically we will drop and find a car, drive to a high loot location. Seems to work very well.
This is useful: