Planes overhead in B36

Solihull and Birmingham, West Midlands. All 568 of its postcodes measured (6 PO boxes and other large-user postcodes left out), January to August 2026.

From Birmingham

Planes land and take off into the wind, so the weather decides which way Birmingham flies, and that decides how many pass over B36. Across its postcodes, January to August 2026:

Each sector's bar splits its postcodes by how many planes pass over them a day; the figure above it counts those in the busiest band the sector reaches. The list above gives the whole district's counts.

Planes overhead from Birmingham in B36, by postcode sector and the way Birmingham flies
SectorFlying west38% of daysBoth ways24% of daysFlying east38% of days
B36 0202 postcodes1 on an edge202 under 10202 under 10
B36 8194 postcodes49 at 100+34 at 100+40 at 100+
B36 9172 postcodes4 at 100+30 at 10 to 99172 under 10

On an edge: the postcode is on the edge of a flight path, where a few metres decide whether a plane counts as overhead, and the fewest and the most within 100 m of it fall in different bands.

What counts as overhead

Overhead means more than halfway up the sky (48.5 degrees or more) and below 7,000 ft, the CAA's definition of an overflight (CAP 1498). A day counts as one way when 80% of its flights used that way. PO boxes and other postcodes for organisations that receive a lot of post are left out: they sit at a delivery office or a business, not at homes.

Near B36

B34 B35 B33 B24 B37 B76 B26 B23

The councils

Where these figures come from

Counted from community flight tracking, checked against the CAA's monthly totals for Birmingham. Flight tracks: adsb.lol (ODbL 1.0); Weather at each airport: Iowa Environmental Mesonet; Ground heights: Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right; Postcode positions: ONS National Statistics Postcode Lookup (OGL). Licence: Open Database License (ODbL) 1.0.

How the planes are counted