Planes overhead in RM5

Havering, Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge, London. All 375 of its postcodes measured (5 PO boxes and other large-user postcodes left out), January to August 2026.

From London City

Planes land and take off into the wind, so the weather decides which way London City flies, and that decides how many pass over RM5. 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 London City in RM5, by postcode sector and the way London City flies
SectorFlying west47% of daysBoth ways18% of daysFlying east35% of days
RM5 2175 postcodes82 at 10 to 9980 at 10 to 99175 under 10
RM5 3200 postcodes152 at 10 to 99148 at 10 to 99200 under 10

Also counted here: Heathrow, at most 2 a day over any of its postcodes.

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.

Over 82 of its postcodes, other flying passes too, from airfields, helicopters and airports we cannot check against official counts, so few planes from the airports we count does not mean a quiet sky there.

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 RM5

RM1 RM7 RM2 RM6 RM3 RM11 IG6 IG3

The councils

Where these figures come from

Counted from community flight tracking, checked against the CAA's monthly totals for London City. 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