Planes overhead in RM6
Barking and Dagenham and Redbridge, London. All 520 of its postcodes measured (10 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 RM6. Across its postcodes, January to August 2026:
On a day it flies west, 47% of days
Up to 43
a day
Of its 520 postcodes:
- 10 to 99
- 35
- on an edge
- 25
- under 10
- 460
On a day it flies both ways, 18% of days
Up to 25
a day
Of its 520 postcodes:
- 10 to 99
- 34
- on an edge
- 26
- under 10
- 460
On a day it flies east, 35% of days
Up to 1
a day
Of its 520 postcodes:
- under 10
- 520
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 west47% of days | Both ways18% of days | Flying east35% of days |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM6 4198 postcodes | 1 on an edge | 1 on an edge | 198 under 10 |
| RM6 5160 postcodes | 35 at 10 to 99 | 34 at 10 to 99 | 160 under 10 |
| RM6 6162 postcodes | 162 under 10 | 162 under 10 | 162 under 10 |
Also counted here: Heathrow, at most 5 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.
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 RM6
IG3 RM7 IG2 IG6 RM5 RM1 RM10 RM9
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.