Planes overhead in B74
Birmingham and Walsall, West Midlands. 681 of its 759 postcodes measured, the ones in Birmingham and Walsall, 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 B74. Across its postcodes, January to August 2026:
- On a day it flies west (38% of days): up to 3 a day; of its 681 postcodes, 681 under 10
- On a day it flies both ways (24% of days): up to 67 a day; of its 681 postcodes, 276 at 10 to 99, 26 on an edge, 379 under 10
- On a day it flies east (38% of days): up to 116 a day; of its 681 postcodes, 114 at 100+, 151 at 10 to 99, 38 on an edge, 378 under 10
The table counts the postcodes of each sector by how many planes pass over them a day: 100 or more, 10 to 99, or under 10.
| Sector | Flying west38% of days | Both ways24% of days | Flying east38% of days |
|---|---|---|---|
| B74 2263 postcodes | 263 under 10 | 87 at 10 to 9926 on an edge150 under 10 | 62 at 100+19 at 10 to 9933 on an edge149 under 10 |
| B74 3189 postcodes | 189 under 10 | 189 at 10 to 99 | 52 at 100+132 at 10 to 995 on an edge |
| B74 4229 postcodes | 229 under 10 | 229 under 10 | 229 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.
Near B74
B73 B75 B44 WS9 B23 B76 WS5 WS4
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.