Why do I suddenly get more planes than last year?

You have lived in the same house for years, and this year the planes seem to be overhead all the time. You are probably not imagining it, and the reason is rarely a secret. Most changes come from one of six causes, and each leaves a trace in the airport's published figures, the regulator's records or a flight tracker.

The six usual reasons

A year with more wind from one side

Planes take off and land into the wind, so the wind decides which side of the airport gets the landings and which gets the take-offs. And the mix of winds changes from year to year.

Heathrow publishes the split every year. Over the long run it operates westerly about 70% of the time, with planes landing over London, and easterly about 30%, with planes landing over Windsor. But in 2024 it was easterly 27% of the time, and in 2025 37%. That is about five more weeks of easterly operations in one year, and in April 2025 alone Heathrow was easterly 71% of the time. For Datchet and Clewer, under the easterly approach, 2025 was a busy year; for Kew and Putney it was a quieter one. The swing has been bigger before: 19% easterly in 2017, 37% in 2018.

So if the planes have moved rather than multiplied, check the wind first. Why flight paths change with the wind explains the rules airports follow when they turn round.

Satellite navigation and concentrated flight paths

Planes used to find their way by radio beacons on the ground, and they spread out more along a route. Performance-based navigation (PBN) uses on-board area navigation, or RNAV, and satellite positioning instead, so planes can follow a published route far more precisely.

The UK government's 2017 air navigation guidance describes the effect plainly. With PBN, planes are much more concentrated around the published route, so fewer people are overflown in total. But at airports that have introduced it, the concentration can have a significant impact on the people living directly underneath. If your house is on that line, you can go from hearing some of the planes to hearing all of them, without a single extra flight.

The same guidance called the move to PBN perhaps the biggest change to airspace in 50 years, and one that will take many years to complete. In the UK, London's airspace is being redesigned by the UK Airspace Design Service, run by NATS; no dates have been set for new Heathrow flight paths. The government's guidance also notes that precise navigation can be used the other way, to alternate or spread planes between several routes, which is one of the options designers weigh. In the US, the FAA has been modernising the procedures around busy regions in its Metroplex projects, from Washington DC to Southern California, and its PBN dashboard shows how much each major airport's traffic uses satellite-based arrival and departure routes.

New routes, more flights and the summer schedule

New routes. Airlines change where they fly and add flights to popular destinations, and the government's 2026 guidance recognises that this alone can change where planes go and how much noise people hear. In the US, the FAA says decisions about flight times, numbers of flights and aircraft types are made by the industry, not by the FAA.

More flights. Airports grow, and some took years to recover from the pandemic. Heathrow had 190,032 flights in 2021, 454,317 in 2023 and 477,894 in 2025, close to its limit of 480,000 a year.

The summer schedule. Airline schedules run in two seasons: summer from the last Sunday in March and winter from the last Sunday in October. The difference is large. In our recordings, Gatwick had about 630 flights a day in January and 855 in August, and its night flights more than doubled, from 58 a night to 124. The government's night limits recognise this: under the rules for 2025 to 2028, Gatwick may have 11,200 flights between 23:30 and 06:00 over the summer season and 3,250 over the winter.

Runway works and closures

When a runway, a taxiway or its landing equipment needs work, its traffic has to go somewhere else. Heathrow, for example, times routine maintenance to fit its pattern of alternating runways, but suspends the pattern for longer works, so some streets get planes at hours they would normally be quiet. When the works end, the pattern returns. A new runway is a different matter: it changes flight paths for good, and it takes years of planning and consultation first. Heathrow's third runway, backed by the government in 2025, is planned to open in the mid-2030s.

More planes, or more noticeable ones?

Sometimes the planes have not changed but your life has. Heathrow points out that night flights can seem worse in summer, when people sleep with the windows open. Working from home or a new baby can bring planes you never noticed into your day.

The way to settle it is to count. On a flight tracker, or on our free flight map, pick a few days with the same wind direction and count the planes that pass over your street. A Flight Noise report does this for one address across a whole year, with the loud planes counted by day and at night and split by runway direction, so you can see how much of it depends on the wind.

How to find out what changed

• Your airport. Airports such as Heathrow and Gatwick publish noise reports, flight data and consultations. Heathrow's operational data page, for example, gives the westerly and easterly split month by month and the number of flights each year. The UK's 2026 guidance says airports should be encouraged to publish yearly figures, so that residents can see whether traffic patterns have changed.
• UK airspace changes. Every formal proposal to change the design of flight paths goes through the Civil Aviation Authority's process, known as CAP 1616, and is published on the airspace change portal. You can search by place and sign up for email updates on a proposal.
• US airspace changes. The FAA carries out an environmental review for its airspace redesign and procedure projects, and posts notices of them, including draft environmental assessments open for public comment, on its environmental reviews page. Some airports also have a community roundtable, in which the FAA takes part.
• Your questions. Ask the airport's noise team what changed; in the US, the FAA's online portal takes noise questions and complaints. If a change is still being proposed, responding to the consultation is the moment your view counts most.