Munich Airport noise: flight paths, runways and night flights

Two runways, two directions

Munich has two parallel runways running east to west, more than 2 km apart: the north runway (08L/26R) and the south runway (08R/26L). Both take landings, and over the last year each took about half of them.

Planes land and take off into the wind, so all the traffic runs one way or the other. When the wind is from the west, planes land towards the west (runway 26), coming in over the Erding district, and take off towards Neufahrn and Freising. That happened on 50% of days over the last year. When the wind is from the east, it all turns round: planes land towards the east (runway 08) over Neufahrn, Freising and Hallbergmoos, and take off towards Erding. That happened on 28% of days. On the other 22%, the direction changed during the day, so villages on both sides of the airport had planes.

Westerly days dominate in summer and early autumn: 67% of days in July 2026 and 68% in September. In winter and spring the split is much closer, and in December 2025 and April 2026 there were as many easterly days as westerly ones. Our guide to why flight paths change with the wind explains why one visit to a house can mislead.

Where landing planes fly

Landing planes line up with the runway 15 km or more out and come down on a straight line, so the villages under each line hear them at the same height every time.

Landing from the east (westerly days), the north runway's approach passes over Maria Thalheim at about 2,550 ft, 15 km out, then Manhartsdorf, Glaslern at 1,400 ft and Eitting at 1,050 ft. The south runway's approach, about 2 km further south, passes over Singlding, Tittenkofen, Langengeisling on the northern edge of Erding at about 1,400 ft, and Reisen at 700 to 1,050 ft. Around Reichenkirchen, about 12 km out, planes on both lines are at roughly 2,100 ft. The north runway took 56% of these landings and the south runway 44%.

Landing from the west (easterly days), the north runway's approach passes over Großnöbach at about 2,550 ft, Hetzenhausen, Massenhausen at 1,400 to 1,750 ft and Pulling, part of Freising, at 700 to 1,050 ft. The south runway's approach passes over Oberndorf, Ottenburg, Fürholzen at 1,700 ft, Neufahrn at about 1,050 ft, Achering at 700 ft and Goldach, part of Hallbergmoos, at 350 ft. The south runway took 53% of these landings and the north runway 47%.

At 10 km out, a landing plane is typically about 1,750 ft up. A large jet at that height is clearly heard well to either side of the line, so a village 1 km from it hears every landing too. Our guide to how high planes fly when landing explains the descent.

Where take-offs go

Take-offs climb much faster than landings descend and turn onto their routes within a few kilometres, so they spread over a wider area at greater heights.

On westerly days, 57% of take-offs carry on west, passing Massenhausen about 3,850 ft up 8 km out, and 40% turn south towards Ismaning at about 4,100 ft. On easterly days, 57% carry on east over Langengeisling at about 3,250 ft, and about a third turn north towards Langenbach, at around 4,350 ft.

So Massenhausen and Langengeisling hear planes whichever way the wind blows: landings one way, take-offs the other.

Night flights and quiet hours

Munich's night rules, set by the government of Upper Bavaria in 2001, cover 22:00 to 06:00. Apart from late flights and emergencies, only aircraft on the federal transport ministry's bonus list of quieter types may fly in those hours, and the whole night is held to a noise quota. The core night, midnight to 05:00, is closed to all but mail flights, air traffic control survey flights, emergencies, landings for safety reasons and flights the authorities approve as exceptions. In the rest of the night, the rules allow:

• up to 28 scheduled flights a night: landings and take-offs from 22:00 to 23:30, and landings only from 05:00 to 06:00
• flights by airlines with a maintenance base at Munich, and by aircraft that average no more than 75 dB(A) at each noise monitor
• late flights until midnight, if they were due before 22:00, and early landings from 05:00

In 2025, Munich averaged about 60 flights a night between 22:00 and 06:00, down from 65 in 2024. Of these, 86% were before midnight and 12% between 05:00 and 06:00; the core hours had just 1.6 a night. The noise quota was 53% used.

Our recordings match. A typical night has no landings or take-offs from about 23:35 to 05:00. The evening is the busy end of the night: about 39 flights between 22:00 and 23:00 and 9 between 23:00 and midnight, against 8 between 05:00 and 06:00. Counting 23:00 to 07:00, 49 planes landed or took off on an average night over the last year, and 99 on the busiest. Summer nights are busier: about 65 a night in July and August, against 35 in January and February.

Busy days and quiet days

Munich handled 337,438 flights in 2025, 3.1% more than in 2024, or about 925 a day. Our count from recorded flights is lower, about 850 a day, because not every flight is captured. Traffic rises from about 690 a day in January to between 930 and 1,040 from June to October, and the busiest day in our year was 11 September 2026, with 1,068. Saturday is the quietest day of the week.

For homes under the approaches, the runway direction still matters more than the total. A village under one approach can go days without a landing, then hear one every few minutes for a week.

The third runway and a new noise protection area

The government of Upper Bavaria approved a third runway on 26 July 2011. It has not been built. The Bavarian coalition agreement of October 2023 says the plans will not be pursued in the current parliamentary term, which runs to 2028. The City of Munich, one of the airport's three shareholders with the state and the federal government, has asked for the project to be stopped, and the shareholders' meeting turned that down.

The approval would have lapsed in March 2026 if work had not begun. In July 2025 the Bavarian Administrative Court ruled that it had: the airport has bought land and finished an S-Bahn tunnel under the planned apron, new roads and part of the apron, so the approval stays in force. The court added that it does not last for ever: if the project is clearly abandoned, those affected can ask for it to be withdrawn.

Separately, the Bavarian government is setting a noise protection area for Munich under the federal Aircraft Noise Act. It is calculated for 2033 with only the two existing runways, and a draft was put to the councils around the airport in 2026. Once it is in force, it will decide which homes can claim for sound insulation and where new homes, schools and care homes are restricted. If you are buying near the airport, check where the new zones fall.

Complaints, insulation and help

To complain, contact Munich Airport's noise team on +49 89 975 404 10 or at laerm@munich-airport.de, or use the contact form on its website.

To check a flight, Munich Airport's TraVis viewer shows flights with their heights and aircraft types alongside readings from its 16 fixed noise monitors, all within about 20 km of the airport. Councils can ask for a mobile monitor: in 2024 there were six, in places including Fahrenzhausen, Langenbach and Dachau. Our free Munich flight map replays recorded days.

For insulation, the airport has paid for about 21,000 soundproof windows and 20,000 ventilators in homes around it since 1992, €62 million in all. Who qualified depended on the day and night protection areas set in its planning approvals. The 2001 night rules extended them to whole villages, among them Reichenkirchen, Hatting and Singlding in Fraunberg, Giggenhausen and Schaidenhausen in Neufahrn, and Weg and Maurer in Wartenberg. A service programme replacing faulty resin-filled panes from earlier schemes was extended for the last time to the end of 2025. New claims will follow from the noise protection area now being drawn up.