How high do planes fly when landing and taking off?

Planes do not fly at random heights near an airport. Landings follow a fixed slope, so the height of a plane over any spot on the approach is almost the same every time, and take-offs follow minimum climb rules. Once you know the distance from the runway, you can work out roughly how high the planes over a house will be.

The 3° glide path

Most landings at large airports end on a straight descent at 3° to the ground, usually guided by the runway's instrument landing system. Heathrow sets its final approach at 3°, so a plane is at a set height for each distance from the runway.

A 3° slope loses about 300 ft of height for every nautical mile (1.85 km), or about 170 ft for every kilometre. By that rule, a plane 5 km from the runway is about 850 ft up and one 10 km out about 1,700 ft. Real heights sit a little above that simple rule, as our Heathrow figures below show. Take-offs are different: they climb much more steeply and turn onto their routes.

A small share of planes at Heathrow fly a slightly steeper 3.2° approach, which keeps them a little higher. Some other airports use steeper approaches on particular runways, so check the published procedures for yours.

Real landing heights at Heathrow

We measured the heights of every recorded landing at Heathrow on sample days over the last year, on the two westerly approaches that come in over west London. These are typical heights above the runway:

The real heights sit close to the simple 170-ft-per-kilometre rule, a little above it all the way out. That is why people under an approach see the same planes at the same height day after day, and why a plane at 1,800 ft over Kew is loud: at that height a large jet is heard well to either side of the line. Our Heathrow page has the easterly approach over Windsor as well.

Where planes join the glide path

Before the final approach, arriving planes are directed by air traffic control. At Heathrow they often wait in one of four holding stacks, circling at 7,000 ft above sea level or higher in levels 1,000 ft apart, which our guide on why planes circle explains. From the stack, controllers give each plane headings and heights to fly, so the paths vary from flight to flight until the plane lines up with the runway.

The rules then set how low a plane may be when it joins the final approach. At Heathrow:

• By day, planes must join it no lower than 2,500 ft above sea level, which is about 8 nautical miles (15 km) from the runway.
• At night, the minimum is 3,000 ft, and planes may not join closer than 10 nautical miles (18.5 km).

So by day, the last 15 km or so of every landing follow the same straight line, and at night the last 18.5 km. Other airports have their own rules.

Continuous descent approaches

The descent from the stack can be flown in steps, levelling off at each height a controller gives, or as one steady descent. The steady version is called a continuous descent approach. Its aim is less noise from arriving planes: it keeps them higher for longer on the way in, and it burns less fuel.

Heathrow counts an approach as continuous if it has no level stretch longer than 2.5 nautical miles below 6,800 ft above sea level, and reports how many flights achieve it each month. Once a plane is on the final 3° slope, a continuous descent makes no difference: the height over each house is set by the slope.

How high planes are after take-off

A plane taking off uses close to full power and climbs away steeply. At Heathrow the government sets minimum standards: every take-off must reach at least 1,000 ft by 6.5 km from where its take-off run started, then keep climbing at a gradient of at least 4% up to 4,000 ft. In 2025, 99.91% of flights met the climb gradient. Up to 4,000 ft, planes must also stay within a corridor 3 km wide around their published route; above it, controllers can send them more directly on their way.

In practice they climb much faster than the minimum. These are the typical heights we measure past the end of Heathrow's runways:

Between 2 and 8 km, Heathrow's take-offs gain about 300 ft for every kilometre, almost twice as steep as a landing's 3° slope. That is a large part of why landings reach further out than take-offs, even though take-offs are louder close to the runway.

Why the heights you see can differ

• Weight. A heavily loaded plane is generally lower over the ground after take-off than a lighter one, so long-haul departures full of fuel pass lower than short-haul ones. Landing heights hardly depend on weight, because the slope is fixed.
• Above what? Air traffic rules give heights above sea level, while our figures are above the runway. If your house stands on a hill above the airport, the planes are that much lower above you.
• Air pressure. Heights shown on air traffic radar are affected by air pressure. Heathrow notes that pressure changes in summer make some planes look lower than they really are when they join the final approach.
• Outside the rules. A plane that abandons a landing and climbs away, or is directed around other traffic, will not follow these figures. If planes over you seem unusually low, our guide on why planes fly low over houses explains the reasons and what the law allows.

To see the heights of the planes over a particular street, our free flight map for Heathrow replays a whole day of landings and take-offs with their heights.