Planes overhead in WS9
Walsall, West Midlands. 556 of its 597 postcodes measured, the ones in Walsall (33 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 WS9. Across its postcodes, January to August 2026:
On a day it flies west, 38% of days
Up to 2
a day
Of its 556 postcodes:
- under 10
- 556
On a day it flies both ways, 24% of days
Up to 53
a day
Of its 556 postcodes:
- 10 to 99
- 429
- on an edge
- 28
- under 10
- 99
On a day it flies east, 38% of days
Up to 97
a day
Of its 556 postcodes:
- 10 to 99
- 534
- under 10
- 22
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 west38% of days | Both ways24% of days | Flying east38% of days |
|---|---|---|---|
| WS9 0205 postcodes | 205 under 10 | 182 at 10 to 99 | 188 at 10 to 99 |
| WS9 8222 postcodes | 222 under 10 | 179 at 10 to 99 | 222 at 10 to 99 |
| WS9 9129 postcodes | 129 under 10 | 68 at 10 to 99 | 124 at 10 to 99 |
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.
2 of its postcodes have a position ONS estimates, so their figures may be for a spot a few hundred metres away.
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 WS9
WS4 WS8 B74 WS3 WS1 WS5 WS2 B44
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.