Planes overhead in BS39
Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol. 611 of its 613 postcodes measured, the ones in Bath and North East Somerset (11 PO boxes and other large-user postcodes left out), January to August 2026.
From Bristol
Planes land and take off into the wind, so the weather decides which way Bristol flies, and that decides how many pass over BS39. Across its postcodes, January to August 2026:
On a day it flies west, 54% of days
Up to 106
a day
Of its 611 postcodes:
- 100 or more
- 3
- 10 to 99
- 270
- on an edge
- 4
- under 10
- 334
On a day it flies both ways, 21% of days
Up to 116
a day
Of its 611 postcodes:
- 100 or more
- 3
- 10 to 99
- 307
- on an edge
- 4
- under 10
- 297
On a day it flies east, 25% of days
Up to 98
a day
Of its 611 postcodes:
- 10 to 99
- 149
- under 10
- 462
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.
| Sector | Flying west54% of days | Both ways21% of days | Flying east25% of days |
|---|---|---|---|
| BS39 4139 postcodes | 3 at 100+ | 3 at 100+ | 93 at 10 to 99 |
| BS39 5193 postcodes | 145 at 10 to 99 | 149 at 10 to 99 | 50 at 10 to 99 |
| BS39 6111 postcodes | 79 at 10 to 99 | 77 at 10 to 99 | 6 at 10 to 99 |
| BS39 7168 postcodes | 45 at 10 to 99 | 1 at 10 to 99 | 168 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 BS39
BA3 BS31 BS14 BA2 BS40 BS4 BS41 BS30
The councils
Where these figures come from
Counted from community flight tracking, checked against the CAA's monthly totals for Bristol. 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.